


Close to the Vest

by Zeke Black (istia)



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Drama, M/M, Old West, POV Ezra Standish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-05-09
Updated: 2001-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:16:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezra is a mess. Then matters get worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close to the Vest

**Author's Note:**

> My first story in this fandom, in which I indulged a few kinks with amused abandon.

Ezra Standish looked at the man who was peering at him from the doorway. Rough, bearded, and none too young, the cowboy was at least moderately clean: Old Man Ji had played fair. The rest was up to him.

He pushed himself up from the bunk, clinging surreptitiously to the bedpost until the wave of dizziness retreated. He straightened his back and shoulders and walked to the door. A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him into the light. He squinted, but didn't protest the searching gaze. He also couldn't avoid seeing the avaricious smile that spread across the plain, weathered face.

"You're a pretty one, all right; the old man didn't lie. He's sold you to me for the night. You gonna give me any trouble?"

He shook his head numbly. The entire night? He wouldn't be able to walk in the morning.

It wasn't as bad as he'd feared, though he certainly walked with stiff care the following dawn. He'd done his best to satisfy the man's voracious appetite with minimum damage to himself; he considered carrying only one bruise where it showed wasn't a bad deal. Old Man Ji had agreed to reduce the debt by one-third. If he could get his luck in order and win some games today, he'd be free of the Chinaman.

Until the next time.

Luck, however, remained as scarce as virginity in a crib. He found it difficult to concentrate. His head pounded, and certain intimate portions of his anatomy refused to let him forget about them. Pain, though, was something he was used to and could cope with; elusive luck was another matter.

His hands itched. That was the first intrusion on his senses. He drank whiskey, but sparingly because he had to hoard his stake money. His legs itched, and then his arms. He felt as though hundreds of ants were scurrying on him, making him twitch, breaking his concentration. He wiped beads of sweat from his upper lip and thought he could smell the growing stink of his own fear and failure. His fingers holding the cards before blurring eyes trembled slightly: a warning, a sign. Some of the ants crawled into his head and became a swarm of bees, buzzing by the dozens in his brain until he couldn't bear it any longer.

He excused himself with shaky dignity. Made his way back to the Chinaman's shack of wonders. Did the inevitable.

The opium made the ants flee and the bees slumber. He lay on the bunk in the windowless room only remotely cognizant of other semi-comatose lotus-eaters nearby, glimpsed through the smoky air. Wrapped in blissful silence, distanced from all his concerns, he was aware only at a remove of eyes that watched him, a hand that touched him, voices that clashed distantly above him. Only when hands dragged him upright and pulled him into the dubious privacy of one of the back rooms did he understand he had been sold again. Which debt was he paying off this time? The previous tally, or tonight's indulgence?

This man was older. Dirtier. His longjohns stank as he dragged them apart and shoved Ezra to his knees, crushing his face into the noisome crotch. He gagged, but a slap across his head awoke him both to where he was and to his danger. The man had paid his silver and he expected his goods to be delivered. Being the goods, Ezra would have no chance to decline. The opium made him dazed and uncoordinated. He recognized with a shiver of foreboding that he couldn't have escaped the clutch of a determined little girl.

Mouthing the man was disgusting, but preferable to the moment when he was pushed onto the bed, felt his pants ripped down, and was mounted. The man drove into him without finesse or care. Feeling as though he were being staked, he strangled a cry in the stained, thin pillow and willed his spasming body to relax as much as possible and ride it out. Lessons learned early surfaced from his fogged brain to guide and help him through the ordeal.

He thought nothing could be worse than the pain and disgust of enduring the man's repeated demands through the hours that followed. He was sure he had plumbed the depths of degradation in his reluctant but voluntary agreement to everything that was done to and expected of him. What could possibly be worse than paying the wages of his own sin in the form of servicing this crude and dirty man, and knowing of his own acquiescence in humiliation?

He held this naive belief that he couldn't possibly know any worse humiliation until the very moment when he was on his knees on the bed sucking at the limp penis, trying to ignite the response the wrangler was demanding, and the door opened behind him to admit an unexpected witness.

"Ezra, you here? Old Man Ji said--"

He froze in disbelief for a long moment before he turned his head the fraction needed to confirm that the puzzled voice in the doorway did indeed belong to young Mr. JD Dunne. A singularly white-faced and shocked-looking, not to mention very-young-looking indeed, Mr. Dunne. He stared momentarily into stunned dark eyes, then closed his own in despairing retreat as the shaky youthful voice spoke again.

"God. Ezra--oh, God."

The door banged shut. Footsteps pounded on the floorboards in a fading staccato rhythm. He let the flaccid cock slip from his mouth and ignored the man's half-hearted attempt to poke him into continuing the hopeless task.

He didn't look at the fellow as he pushed himself to his feet. He found his clothes, gathered them from where they were scattered, and sorted them with fingers that felt like sausages. His balance was uncertain, and darkness pulsed at the edges of his vision like a small tide of ink while the room had a disconcerting tendency to lurch around him. He focused his will, and had managed to pull on his pants and button them before the door banged open. He looked up to see the small hall crowded with familiar figures, though it was Chris, predictably, who strode into the room. Chris's hard eyes glanced at him before they turned to rest on the sprawled naked form on the bed, an inert pink and brown and hairy lump of unappetizing manhood. He watched stonily as Chris's eyes switched back to him, perusing his body from his bare feet to his naked chest, lingering there momentarily, perhaps on the bruises. When the narrowed eyes finally met his from the shadow of the wide-brimmed black hat, he felt as though his limbs were packed in ice.

"What the hell's going on here?" Buck blustered as he shouldered his way into the small room, which suddenly seemed the size of a chicken coop.

The man on the bed was rousing and blustering in his turn.

As Chris moved closer to him, he managed to quell the urge to back away, though he felt the ignominy of an involuntary twitch as Chris's flinty eyes bored into him unwaveringly. In that single-minded way he had, Chris seemed to be ignoring the voices around them, ignoring everyone but him. He stayed still as Chris stalked him, not because he had much pride left, but because he knew he had no escape. A hard hand closed on his shoulder, and the other grasped his chin with equal firmness. His face was turned to the pale dawn light coming in the net-covered window. Despite himself, he couldn't help wincing as the light touched his face. With his eyes gritty from lack of sleep and sensitive from the drug, he trembled with the effort not to let the water welling in them fall, as though he were crying.

Crying was for the lonely, private moments, not for public display. He had at least that much pride left to him; a tiny core of pride lurking among the despair and humiliation, for all the good it could possibly do him.

He shivered as Chris's hands dropped, taking away the grudging support.

"Get him out of here." Chris's voice was low and harsh, the words spoken as he was turning away. "Take him to Nathan. And you'd better tell Nathan to check him--all over."

The shred of pride he retained could endure only so much: "Now, see here--"

Chris whirled in a fluid movement. His hand whipped across Ezra's cheek, making him careen into the wall. Rage and more pain-induced tears blinded him. His head abruptly filled again with angrily buzzing bees, he staggered to the washbowl, retching dryly and painfully for long moments. Blood from his lip spattered the florid cabbage-roses painted on the chipped porcelain.

When he surfaced, he found Josiah at his side, felt a blanket being wrapped around him and a strong arm encircling his shoulders, and he allowed Josiah to lead him out of the room barefoot and almost naked as he was. The door shut behind them on the querulous voice of the nameless cowpoke, and he was vaguely aware of being hustled quickly down the corridor and out into the glare of sunlight that was too bright, even so early in the morning. He stumbled on a stone beneath his foot, and Josiah pulled him closer against his burly strength. He kept his head down and his eyes closed, willing himself to stay conscious as the pain in his head burst into explosions of noise and light that rivaled the pyrotechnic rockets Old Man Ji sold for special days.

"Almost there." He shivered at the kindness in the voice and the hands, at the tacit understanding Josiah seemed to be offering him, free of censure.

Chris's fury had been easier to bear. It, at least, was familiar.

The stairs to Nathan's clinic had never seemed this steep before. He was virtually lifted up the last few, his vision dimming, and he returned to awareness to find himself being lowered onto the iron bedstead. He twisted onto his side, pulling his legs up to try to control the nausea, and held the blanket from the opium hut close to his face, hiding himself in the coarse material despite the stench it exuded.

"Yeah, but I tell you, he was--"

"Everyone out." Nathan's cool voice cut cleanly across JD's high-pitched anxiety.

With relief, he heard the booted footsteps of too many large men leaving the room. The door closed. Silence fell, broken only by such soft sounds as water pouring into a china basin and cupboards swishing open on oiled hinges. He clung to the peacefulness and the dark behind his eyelids, but his respite didn't last long. Too soon, Nathan was bending over him, insistent about pulling the blanket away, insistent about touching him, insistent about washing his face and dabbing stinging alcohol on the cut on his lip, insistent about probing his body with careful hands, insistent about turning him to lie on his back, exposed. Far too exposed.

He managed an even voice when he finally had to look up at Nathan's face hovering over him. "I'm fine. This is not necessary, I assure you."

"Chris's orders."

"Chris doesn't own me!" He bit his sore lip, swallowing against a new surge of nausea and wishing desperately for his customary aplomb.

"No, I reckon no one owns you but yourself." The former slave and son of slaves looked at him calmly. "But maybe you owe him something, and maybe the rest of us, too. Or maybe you don't. I reckon that's up to you, too." Nathan sat back, lifting his hands. "You're a free man, Ezra. Free to walk outta here any time you want."

He looked uneasily from the face that was too wise for its years to the door. The stairs might defeat him, but that was no reason not to try. He pushed himself up with caution. When the nausea remained manageable, he swung his legs off the bed. Nathan moved away, giving him room for which he was grateful.

"I--" He looked blindly around the room. "My clothes."

It seemed an insurmountable obstacle. He couldn't, simply couldn't, parade through the streets without appropriate clothing as a defense between himself and the rest of the world. The lack of clothing and footwear wouldn't stop any of the others for a moment, but he knew his limits. He hated them, castigated himself for them, but he knew exactly how much he could and could not bear.

Nathan lifted an unprepossessing bundle from the top of the bureau and placed it on the end of the bed before stepping away again.

"Buck gathered up your clothes."

He flinched at the memory of how they had been scattered across the chair and the floor, but put the image away from himself. It hardly mattered. The incident had happened, it was fact, and now there was nothing to do but move on. He shed the prickly blanket and sorted his belongings with clumsy fingers. With effort, he managed to tug on his socks and boots, ignoring as best he could the dark edges to his vision as he bent over. His shirt was missing a button, but he fastened the remaining ones, including the one at the collar. He smoothed the fine poplin over his chest, tucked the tails into his pants, and pulled the suspenders up over his shoulders. Despite fingers that showed an unnerving tendency to shake like a palsied man's, he managed a decent knot in the crumpled silk ribbon tie. His vest and coat hid the damage to his shirt so he was fit to walk through town to his room. The only item missing was his hat. He must have left it in the dim-lit bunkroom among the smokers. Perhaps the old man would sell it to offset some portion of the remaining debt.

He felt freed from a degree of humiliation now he was clothed. Unable to do anything about the smoky smell that clung to his person, he ignored it. He ran a hand over his hair and was ready to face the gauntlet lying between this room and the haven of his own. He couldn't bring himself to look directly at Nathan, but he glanced in his direction as he gave low-voiced thanks.

His hand was on the glass doorknob when Nathan spoke. "Ezra, all I want to do is help you. That's all any of us want."

"I appreciate your concern, Mr. Jackson, but I do not require assistance, I assure you. I am very well."

In the silence that accepted the lie for what it was, he opened the door and moved outside into a haze of heat. Figures cluttered the long, narrow verandah and he had to expend energy trying not to see them. Straightening his shoulders, he took an uncertain step toward the stairs as silence abruptly blanketed the group until Nathan spoke behind him.

"Josiah, would you mind helping Ezra to his room?"

Josiah was instantly at his side, a large hand clasping his elbow. The men hovering on the porch moved aside for them. Muted voices sounded behind him as he and Josiah gained the stairs, but he ignored them. He used all the will and pride left at his command to move safely, if slowly, down the two flights of stairs, which seemed dauntingly numerous and high. He stumbled when they reached the final step to the boardwalk, but Josiah kept him upright. There were three more steps to negotiate down to the street, and people and a wagon in the street itself that Josiah guided him around. A water trough and hitching rail required a short detour with another step beyond them to be climbed to reach the door of the saloon, and then a further long, steep staircase inside the saloon before he finally reached the sanctuary of his room.

"My thanks, Mr. Sanchez." Almost blind with exhaustion and dizziness, he was relieved beyond all saying when Josiah simply nodded and left.

He shut the door and staggered toward the bed. Failing to navigate properly, he bumped his hip against the night table and stumbled to one knee. Darkness stole over his vision. He struggled to drag himself to his feet, to reach the warmth and safety of the bed. He knew he needed help. He also knew he would never ask for it.

It was twilight when he awoke to feel hands pulling at his clothes. Flailing in panic, he attempted to escape the determined touch and was pinned by a heavy forearm pressing across his throat.

"Stop it. I've had enough." The voice was as implacable as the hands.

He slumped into the mattress. He had no hope of hiding, not even in the dimness. The hands tugged at his clothes. His boots hit the floor with thumps that sounded disconcertingly loud in a quiet the din from the night crowd downstairs permeated only distantly. His socks were yanked off and flung with force after the boots. He was pulled upright so those inexorable hands could yank first his coat and then his vest and shirt off his arms. Sinking back down onto the pillows in apathetic submission, he didn't protest when the hands unbuttoned his pants and yanked them ungently down his hips and off his legs. Since he hadn't wasted time attempting to retrieve his drawers from where they'd been kicked under the bed at Old Man Ji's, merely dragging on his pants in the humiliating aftermath of exposure, he now lay naked.

A lamp was lit and placed on the night table.

"Look at you."

He shut his eyes, making no effort to identify the emotion that harshened the low voice.

"I told Nathan to take care of you."

"Mr. Jackson is well aware that--"

"I don't wanna hear a word from you, Ezra, unless I ask you something direct. You had your chance to have Nathan do this. Now you've just got me."

He turned his face aside; the voice fell silent. The hands came back, however, as insistent as before, far more insistent than Nathan could ever be. They touched him. They mapped his bruises and scrapes. They washed a cloth over him, cleaning him in the way he couldn't presently manage for himself with water that was soothingly warm and must have been carried up from the bar. The hands turned him onto his side, subduing his attempt to resist and gaining their way. They touched his back, and his private places. They washed him there, intimately, with rough tenderness, with contained anger strumming through the quick motions of the strong hands. He scrunched his eyes in retreat as the cloth took some of the heat from his abused, swollen ass. When fingers replaced the cloth, soothing oil onto his most private shame with a gentleness at odds with the hard, callused fingers, he buried his burning face in his arms.

When it was done, there were still no words. The hands drew the covers over him and tucked them around his bare shoulders. He heard quiet movement in the room, and the splash of water. A glass clinked as it was set down on the night table.

For a moment, he thought a hand skimmed over his hair.

The footsteps moved to the door, and paused.

"One day, Ezra, either you'll kill yourself or I'll kill you."

And that seemed too close to a truth for anything else to be said.

The door opened, and shut, and he was alone with the dark behind his eyes and an aching head and the muted hum of stirring bees. He shied away from the miasma of unfocused feelings in himself, working to blank his mind and close them all away. None of his efforts, however, saved him from the forced acknowledgement of the one feeling that pressed most powerfully into his consciousness, sharper than all other feelings and thoughts: shame. And it was shame that kept him company through all the hours of that lonely night.

When dawn came, either shame or pride opened the reserves within him that gave him the impetus to rise early. The bath house was empty, Mrs. Cooper's splotch-faced son yawning as he sloshed buckets of hot water into the copper tub. He flipped the boy a coin that made him disappear to the front of the establishment, and sank with profound pleasure into the soothing heat. He would have liked to linger for an hour or more but, lacking sufficient wherewithal to sustain such luxury, he attended to his ablutions with speedy thoroughness before the water cooled. He shaved with the same care, ignoring a slight tremor in his hand. It was time he ate something; how long had it been? He wasted no effort trying to sort out the past few days, preferring rather to put all thoughts of them away, and returned to his room relieved not to have met anyone who mattered.

He took even more care than usual with his toilet. The charcoal, pin-striped pants went well with the bottle-green frock coat, just as he'd expected when he chose the fabric. The coat's color seemed particularly vibrant against the snow-white shirt displayed in the vee between the lapels of the silver-gray vest. The vest itself flattered him with its row of small black porcelain buttons fastening the patterned brocade snugly across his abdomen. He chose a charcoal neckcloth. He took a breath and stilled the disconcerting tremble in his fingers--he really was overdue for food--and managed to tie the cloth with credible artistry. He affixed his onyx stickpin into the neat folds. The pin was trashy, but no one in this wilderness burg knew the difference. He placed his watch into the fob-pocket, attached the chain to the button on his vest, and arranged the pleated ruffle on each shirt cuff to show below the coat sleeve's corded hems. He had polished his boots himself, saving the two bits it would have cost to have Timmy Cooper do the chore; he cast a quick glance down, reassured when he saw the smooth black calf leather twinkling up at him. He ran the horn-backed brush carefully over his head a final time, making sure each dark hair was in place. He did all of these things with care while pretending he wasn't putting off the moment when he would have to leave his room and face the day after the day before.

Eventually, however, he had to admit he was as ready as he could be. All he lacked was a hat. He glanced a final time in the mirror and stopped, staring. He looked fine, to be sure, until one saw his eyes. Perhaps this coat wasn't a good choice, after all. The color seemed to draw attention to his green eyes, highlighting them and their secrets. For a moment, he floundered, caught on a shoal of uncertainty. The red coat, perhaps? Or might that garment simply accentuate the bloodshot whites of his eyes? The blue was not an option, not after the past few days. Not until he had the money to get it mended and cleaned. There was always the brown, but the brown wouldn't go at all well with the charcoal....

The edifice he had built of himself was threatening to collapse as his breath shallowed in incipient panic. He shook himself, and dragged his gaze away from his reflection. He calmed his heartbeat and his breathing with recourse to rational consideration. It was, after all, unlikely anyone would care to meet his eyes anyway. And, with that cool reminder providing a double prick to his shame and his pride, he squared his shoulders inside the green coat and left his room.

It was still relatively early when he went downstairs. The saloon was quiet, imbued with the odd serenity that inhabits places where violence can erupt at a moment's notice and as quickly sink away again. A few grimy cowhands were playing poker in the back corner. He ran a professional's eye over them, and dismissed them as not being worth the effort. Whatever money they had left after the booze and the whores wouldn't be enough to discharge his debt to Old Man Ji. It would be worth waiting for more promising prey, as long as the wait didn't prove too long.

From the corner of his eye, he noted the presence of Buck, Nathan, and JD. He suffered a fleeting but heartfelt spurt of gratitude that Chris wasn't present, and then turned himself resolutely to the matter of acquiring breakfast and facing his dragons. He walked with studied casualness toward the door, nodding to the trio as he passed the table.

"Gentlemen." He smiled with counterfeit ease.

"Ezra." Buck spoke in a cautious voice while casting a not-at-all subtle look over him from head to foot.

"How're you doing, Ezra?"

"I am doing very well, thank you, Mr. Jackson." He minimally slowed his passage to the door in accordance with the dictates of courtesy. "Or I should say that I shall be well once I have acquired some sustenance. I feel as hollow as a cannonball." The rueful note in his voice pleased him, and he managed another smile.

JD simply stared, large-eyed and mute.

He was past the table, then, with the faces and the eyes behind him, out of his view, and he pushed through the swing doors into the sun-drenched dustiness of Four Corners' main street. He turned left, heading for the restaurant. He had no hat to tip, so he inclined his head as he stepped aside to allow black-garbed Widow Holmes to pass him on the boardwalk. A bulbous young fellow was arranging barrels of goods on the boardwalk in front of the Hardware. He side-stepped the protruding backside and reached the restaurant with a sense of relief. Food would calm his nerves and settle his stomach, and then he'd be able to set about mending the disaster his life had become.

Only about half of the restaurant's gingham-covered tables were occupied. The smells of grease and coffee were heavy in the air and made him feel a surge of nausea; he clamped down on it and chose, by habit, a table where he could sit facing the door. Always advisable to place oneself with the best view of any potential problems. He unfolded the large napkin and spread it across his lap, smoothing it with a nervous hand. Sun-bleached and ironed to within an inch of its life, it gave off a scent of crisp freshness.

"Good morning, Ezra."

He looked up with genuine pleasure at the sound of the shy voice, and smiled. His smile widened as he examined the figure standing beside the table, water jug in hand.

"Why, Miss Addie, what a picture you look this morning. Is that a new frock you're wearing?"

A plump hand smoothed the robin's-egg blue seersucker of the wide skirt that flowed over generous hips. A bodice of the same material adorned an equally generous bosom.

"Mama sent for it all the way from the East. We saw a picture in the Montgomery Ward catalog Mrs. Potter had. Mama had to let it out a little bit when it came, but it's from the East. All the way." The breathless recital came to an end, and the flushed face shone with happy wonder at the miracle of modern transportation.

He smiled up at her. "I hope you will forgive me the liberty if I say I believe it is the prettiest dress I've ever seen in these parts. And the color exactly matches your very pretty eyes, Miss Addie."

"There's a new bonnet, too," she rushed to add. "Would you like to see it, Ezra?"

"I shall look forward to the pleasure immensely."

"Adelena!"

He looked across the room, his smile fading to bland politeness as he met the scowl of the good lady who kept both the restaurant and her daughter under her estimably tight control. Not that she didn't have reason to be leery of any man who took an interest in her well grown but simple-minded child. Much as it rankled, he could hardly fault her for being particularly uncomfortable with her daughter's liking for the town's resident gambler and con man, no matter that he tread--well, somewhat--on the side of the angels these days.

Addie filled his water glass, slopping some on the tablecloth, and hurried to her mother's side. He sipped from the glass, and rubbed a finger in the damp spot on the cloth. Would he once have taken advantage of a tasty but childlike morsel such as Miss Adelena Sorensen? He couldn't really imagine it. Even in his callow youth, he'd had a preference for sophistication or, at the very least, competence in his bedmates. It was the spirit that attracted him more than the body. While a romp was a romp and any pliable body would do for that if the mood and the need struck, such encounters offered no challenge. And challenge was, often to his downfall, the strongest aphrodisiac. Even in his most hedonistic phase, he couldn't imagine having taken advantage of anyone as innocent as the Sorensen girl.

Though, really, there was no point in getting depressed at being judged for what he appeared to be.

"Good morning, Mr. Standish."

Jarred out of his preoccupation, he looked up at the slim, attractive young woman who seemed to tower over him, and pasted a smile on his face. He half-rose in a bow.

"Good morning, Mrs. Travis. How are you this fine morning?"

"I'm very well. And you?"

He suspected she disliked him as much as he disliked her--and for much the same reason, though undoubtedly not consciously on her part--and made sure his smile was its most falsely gracious. He knew from sessions of practicing in front of the mirror that his gold tooth would be giving his smile its dash of odd, distinctive charm. He watched as her too-pretty face grew a little wooden and cool behind the polite warmth. They were like two dogs circling, he thought, and deepened his smile a touch more. She might be as tall as he and fair as a daffodil, but he had her beat in dimples.

"Oh, very well, thank you, ma'am. Are you breakfasting alone? Would you do me the honor of joining me?"

"No, thank you. I'm due to meet Mr. Hamill. I'm doing a piece in the _Clarion_ on the Tucker Crow gang. Mr. Hamill was in Trentville when they hit the bank there and killed the sheriff. I've heard reports that they might be heading in this direction. I was wondering if Mr. Tanner had returned yet with any news?"

Returned? A vague memory surfaced of Vin's having ridden out to lend his tracking skills to the posse from Trentville and that area to the east. He'd lost track of the days. A week ago? Could it have been that long? He'd been going increasingly to Old Man Ji's shack, and time lately hadn't retained a measurable reality.

"No, I don't believe he has returned yet." He ignored the puzzled look in her fine eyes as he let the facade of politeness slip in a return to preoccupation.

Why did she have to be so pretty she would take any man's breath away? He felt morose as he watched her walk gracefully across the room to join the weasel-faced merchant sitting kitty-corner to him. She was perfectly groomed as usual, with her flaxen hair swept into an elegant knot. She'd even remembered to remove those canvas guards she wore over her sleeves to protect her dress when she was operating the press. Though possibly that was because it was early and she hadn't yet done any printing. Reporter, writer, typesetter, and printer all in one. An amazing woman. And let's not forget little Billy: a mother on top of all else. Beautiful, independent, intelligent, fiery, and yet softly maternal as well.

He liked a challenge, all right, but some competition was such that even he was unable to convince himself he had a chance of overcoming it. Providing he wanted to overcome it, of course.

Addie delivered a plate covered with a steaming, fluffy omelet and fried potatoes. He managed a smile for her and attacked the food ravenously. He took only a few forkfuls before he realized he wasn't as hungry as he had thought. The food was hot and fragrant, but it tasted like shredded paper. He dabbed at his mouth with the napkin and drank the hot, strong coffee. He felt a little calmer, at any rate. If he could get through this day, he might be able to win the cash he needed to finish with the Chinaman. He might even be able to retrieve his hat. He was fond of that hat. The low-crowned black beaver felt with a piped brim, costly and yet rakish, suited him. The thought of some cowpoke wearing it was intolerable.

He paid the bill and left with a blithe promise, delivered under Mrs. Sorensen's jaundiced eye, to view Addie's new bonnet at the first opportunity. Whatever the mother thought, he would never hurt the child. He wasn't sure just why it bothered him that the woman thought the worst of him. Perhaps it was simply an odd sort of sibling rivalry, because he knew she implicitly trusted Addie with each of the other six members of their little band of peacekeepers. Even Buck, who couldn't resist exercising his charms on every comely female within his orbit, she trusted to be avuncular with her daughter while she apparently read malice into each of his smiles. Not that it mattered. None of them would hurt Addie. It was merely the sense of still being an outsider that sometimes haunted him.

His mother was probably correct in her insistence that he would never find a place among the ordinary sort of folk, though she didn't frame her thesis in quite those terms. She argued, rather, that he was too good to settle for this kind of life, for these people. Why he persisted in behaving contrary to her advice was still not clear to him.

He found himself back at the saloon, having made the return journey lost in his thoughts. Vin had joined Buck, Nathan, and JD. Moving past their table to stand at the bar, he strained to overhear Vin's soft rasp. While directing his apparent attention across the room at an occupied poker table, he gathered there was no definitive word on the whereabouts of Tucker Crow and his men. Chris, however, wanted them to ride out immediately to follow up signs Vin had unearthed in some direction different from the way the Trentville posse had insisted on going.

He'd heard enough. He went upstairs to his room. His hands were again atremble and the bees were stirring in his head. He stood for a moment beside the bed and fumbled the flask from his coat pocket. He took a long swig, closing his eyes as the fine whiskey coursed a fiery trail down his gullet. When he felt calmer, he removed his neckcloth and unfastened the top button on his shirt. No point in being more uncomfortable than necessary on what would be a long, hot, and dusty ride. He took his gunbelt from the wardrobe and strapped the carved russet leather around his hips, adjusting it automatically to its accustomed position with his gun riding low on his right hip. He hesitated for a moment, then removed his coat and shrugged into the shoulder rig. He fastened the buckle in front, and checked that the Richards conversion was loaded before slipping it into the holster under his left arm. Better to be over-armed than under-armed; that was a lesson most men were given only one chance to learn, and he'd had his long ago. He pulled his coat back on and took his bedroll from the floor of the wardrobe. He would miss his hat. The sun would feel unmerciful by mid-afternoon.

When he passed through the saloon, the men had gone. He hurried toward the livery, but his steps slowed when he saw Chris's lean form across the street. He was standing with Mary Travis. The pair stood close to each other as Chris spoke and Mary watched his face with earnest attention. Sun slanted across them, gilding Mary's fair beauty and awakening hints of gold in Chris's dark blond hair.

They made a handsome couple. Although doubtless no one would want to deny what was self-evident, it was pointless not to acknowledge outright the obvious once in a while. She was a tall woman, but she had to look up a few inches to Chris's face; in fact, she looked up the exact degree he had to when Chris stood that close to him. Of course, on the rare occasions when Chris came that close to him in public, it was usually in a situation where he would, if possible, prefer to avoid meeting Chris's eyes entirely. Not that Chris's forceful personality generally made such avoidance possible.

She was a fine woman, and beautiful, and the mother of a son who, while he would never replace Chris's own murdered boy in his heart, had gained a special place in Chris's life.

He forced himself to move when he realized he was staring at the way the stampede strings that banded Chris's throat, holding his hat on his back, shifted with each movement of his larynx. Anxiety returned, and he calmed only when he reached the livery and found he was the first to arrive.

He had saddled his mount and removed his coat to fiddle with the spring-load on the derringer's sleeve rig strapped to his right arm when the others arrived. He looked up with his jury-rigged calm and met Vin's nod of greeting with one of his own as the men went into the stalls, talking desultorily in the way men do who are comfortable with each other and facing a familiar situation. And then there were only Chris's measuring eyes looking at him across a broad, shifting back as Chris saddled his black.

"What're you doing?"

"Doing?" He pulled his coat back on and bent to tighten the cinch on his chestnut a final notch. "I'm laundering my drawers. What on earth does it look like I'm doing?"

The sarcasm slid off Chris with the usual alacrity of water off a duck's back.

"You're not coming."

Chris's voice was calm, even slightly remote. Casual. He floundered in momentary surprise, realizing he hadn't expected to be excluded, though possibly he should have. He couldn't speak for a moment, and he couldn't see Chris's face as the other man bent over to retrieve his bedroll. When Chris was facing him again, strapping the roll in place behind the saddle, he met Ezra's eyes and appeared to see in them the question Ezra couldn't bring himself to voice.

"You're not needed on this patrol. Josiah and JD ain't coming neither." Buck and Nathan led their horses outside, and Chris's voice lifted over the clumping of hoofs. "We'll just be checking out a couple of possible trails Vin found over Lobo way. Nothing certain. Four men are enough."

Vin led his horse out the door with a glance he registered peripherally, but couldn't acknowledge. He couldn't tear his eyes away from Chris's dispassionate face. Chris backed his horse from the stall, and Ezra gave way as the hindquarters swung around. His own horse snorted and shifted, and he laid a hand on the warm, hairy flank as the smell of hay and dust and manure made bile rise abruptly in his throat.

Chris had his horse turned to face the door. He held the reins loosely and leaned close to him. Chris smelled of heated cotton and gun oil; his strong jaw was stubbled in pale bristles darkened by sweat. The implacable eyes stared straight into his own as Chris's voice dropped to a murmur pitched for his ears only. Chris's breath wafted an achingly familiar scent of smoke and whiskey across his cheek.

"Get yourself in order, Ezra. We won't be gone more'n a few days. And don't go back to Oh Wang-Ji's. I paid your debt, and I told the old man if he ever lets you set one foot inside his place again, I'll burn that shack down."

Chris was out the door, then, and bathed in golden glare. The others were mounted, their horses circling in the small corral. Chris's black duster flared like a cape as he swung up into the saddle and the rowels of his spurs clinked like silver dollars tumbled onto the betting table. As the four men left the yard and turned into the street, a shower of dust motes filled the doorway like the haze of a dream the color of a daguerreotype.

:::::::

The day seemed interminable. Minutes passed with excruciating slowness and hours hardly seemed to pass at all. He'd unsaddled his horse with hands that wouldn't stop shaking, scarcely hearing the animal's whickers over the sound of the bees humming inside his head. By the time he'd finished the simple task, he would have sworn there were legions of fire ants swarming over his limbs. Fumbling the flask from his pocket, he'd gulped at the whiskey. Not enough. When had it ever been enough?

He'd returned to the saloon, not knowing where else to go. Had he ever felt this lost before? He had no purpose and could conceive of nothing that needed his attention and effort. He'd glimpsed JD on the boardwalk outside the jail house, sitting on a chair tipped back against the wall, and drawn closer into the shadows of the store fronts, not wanting to have to acknowledge JD or be seen. Even the boy had a purpose in this place, on this day.

He'd hesitated when he reached the saloon, stopping outside the batwing doors. He'd looked down the street to the spare lines of the clapboard church. Josiah might have been there. If anyone knew about handling the beasts that stirred within a man, it was Josiah. Shame, and even cowardice, might have played a part in keeping him from going to Josiah, but it was his oldest companion, despair, that had whispered to him of the futility of seeking help, and he had gone instead into the saloon.

The sense of dislocation followed him even there, into the place where he should have been most at ease. The saloon was where he lived and where he worked. Saloons had been the center of his existence through all his adult life and much of his youth. Everything about this one was familiar, from the dusty light slanting in the netted windows to etch patterns onto the bare plank floors to the small black stove at the room's center and the lanterns nailed to bullet-pocked support posts; from the mismatched collection of tables and chairs to the rippled mirror behind the massive bar with its distorted images of the whole. The jingle of coins was familiar, as were the mingled smells of sweat and dirt and tobacco smoke and spilled, cheap liquor. Someone had melted a slab of cheese on a hunk of bread on the stove, leaving behind a scattering of crumbs and a small puddle of orange grease. He absorbed it all, all the familiar parts that made up this place, and yet felt himself floundering in uncertainty.

He could think of nothing worth attempting. Even the thought of exercising his skill with the cards in the pursuit of monetary reward didn't offer its usual lure. The immediate debt was gone. It had been weighing on him, worrying him, yet without it he felt set adrift. He'd always had a clear purpose in his life for everything he did. He'd worked the cons and the cards to save enough money to buy a place like this saloon for his own one day. To have his own domain. That's all it had been for, all his years of effort and practice with the cards and the cheats. It had been his sole, fixed purpose right up to the day he'd met six strangers and thrown in his lot with theirs. He'd joined them only for the hope of a gold mine as reward, but he'd ended up giving a tacit promise to Chris, the natural leader who had taken charge, that he wouldn't let him down again.

And so life had shifted on its axis without his will, moving from a clear-cut demarcation between himself, with his needs, plans, and desires always taking priority and the rest of the world coming second, to a muddling of the two. To situations where his drive to attain his own goal had to be interrupted, if not abandoned, to accommodate the needs and demands of others. Until his focus on acquiring money and the security of having his own place had eroded into only one of several foci, shared with the draining pulls of other issues. Until Chris's uncompromising ethics and expectations had forced both his schemes and his self-reliance into re-alignment. He risked his life for cowboy's wages. A dollar a day and found: his mother was right to call him a fool.

Which she did, at every opportunity. Darling Mother.

And so he'd stood for uncountable minutes floundering, in this most familiar of places, in an unaccustomed sea of uncertainty. He'd never felt more keenly the need of a purpose. If he'd been able to ride out with the others, he was sure he'd have been better able to ignore the droning that was swelling in volume in his head and the itchiness spreading fire across his anatomy. If he'd had the prick of the debt owed to the Chinaman, he was convinced he could have focused his energies on the cards and shut out what was happening in his body. Because he was without distraction or purpose, he was at the mercy of the imaginary but persistent intrusions of various hymenopterans about and within his person. The indignity of his own involuntary flinches and cold sweats had sent him up the stairs to the privacy of his room.

Where he found his hat sitting on the end of his bed, its curled brim like a black smirk. He flung it across the room and collapsed onto the bed, clutching the footboard with one hand and pressing the other into his cramping gut. A whiff of opium smoke reached him as the hat hit the wall and spun to the floor.

_Get yourself in order, Ezra._

How typical that Chris would simply give the command and ride off expecting the matter to be handled. Yet, it was trust of a kind he had never received from anyone else in his life. Would Chris be disappointed if he left? Would Chris care, would it matter? Some days, he doubted Chris would even notice if he were gone. Other days....

The cramp easing and his mind awhirl, he'd unfolded himself from the bed and retrieved the bottle of Old Forester from the shelf in the wardrobe. He drew up the pillows on the bed and settled himself. Pulling his coat closed against the chills, he drank one mouthful of bourbon, then another.

All the mouthfuls in the world couldn't help. They didn't halt the increasing chills that racked him, or the nausea, or the painful cramps that attacked one muscle after another and made him take a death-grip on the headboard until his fingers ached from the pressure. He knew whiskey wouldn't help, but he continued to cradle the bottle even after he stopped drinking. And, all the while, he nursed within himself resentment and a diffuse pain. If he'd had a purpose on which to focus, he might indeed have got himself in order. Typical of Chris to expect him to see to matters and yet deny him the means to do so.

Restlessness and a sense of being trapped had driven him out of his room in the evening. The saloon was a blur of noise and movement as he hurried through it to the haven of the darkness outside. The street fires gave an uncertain light that left large pools of shadow for a man seeking anonymity. He walked rapidly through the town, slowing only when the noise from the saloons and hotels was well behind him. The dry air out here, away from the fetidness of assembled humans, was warm and fresh despite the ever-present dust in his nostrils. Leaving behind the scent of the burning mesquite branches as he passed the last of the fires, he paused to consider Josiah's meeting house once more. One window showed the steady light of an oil lamp, as though to signal a welcoming presence within. Shivering with chills that owed nothing to the ambient temperature, he'd turned away once more from that source of possible understanding.

He'd found himself on Four Corners' eastern outskirts behind the Chinese laundry without conscious intention. He'd known exactly what he was doing, however, when he knocked on Old Man Ji's door. Humiliation made him sharp with himself, but the biting need inside his skin drove him back to the place of his shame and his weakness. After an adamant old man slammed the door in his face, he reflected that part of his need was, perhaps, the compulsion to push against the constraints that Chris, both explicitly and implicitly, placed on him. Each day, those bonds seemed more demanding, more impossible to live up to, or even acknowledge.

And so he eventually found himself again in the half-lit main street, feeling lost. The piano in Digger Dave's pounded out manic noise through which threaded a more genteel tune issuing from the Gem Hotel. Windows were open up and down the street, lace curtains limp in the still air. He stared at them, stared all around, until a wrenching stomach cramp made him close his eyes to ride it out, clutching a post at the edge of the boardwalk. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself looking at C and D Smith's Livery and Feed opposite. With a sense of inevitability, he raised his eyes to the sign hanging above the outside stairway, barely discernible in the dimness but clear in his mind's eye: _Bones Set, Wounds Healed._

He went up the two flights of stairs with the same sense of inevitability dogging him. The door was locked, but he mastered the art of lock-picking in his youth; Mother had been delighted with the dexterity of his hands. He was inside before anyone could have noticed the shadow hovering around the clinic on a night when Nathan was out of town.

The box was padlocked. His hands shook so much he had to pause to calm himself and to wipe away the sweat that made his fingers slip on the iron, but he got it open with relative ease.

He licked his lips as he stared at the brown bottle with the blue-and-white label. Just a sip. Just a sip to quiet the bees and stop the nausea and the pain, stop all the pain, inside and out. He knew the panacea the bottle offered was an illusion, and a temporary one at that. He'd known it for most of his life. But knowing wasn't the same as doing.

The cork squeaked as it popped free of the narrow bottle neck. Standing in the middle of Nathan's dark room, swaying on wide-set feet, he shut his eyes and put the cool glass to his lips. The liquid was bitter, yet nectar couldn't have been sweeter as it flooded his system.

:::::::

He lay on his featherbed with the shades pulled against the heat and glare of another sun-drenched morning. A rare quietude enveloped him. The sounds in the street--the bustle and tramp of lives and errands and interactions--hardly penetrated his closed window, and the saloon below was unwontedly peaceful. Enough golden light seeped around the edges of the shades to keep the darkness from being oppressive. His door was locked.

He lifted the sheet away and ran his hand down his naked chest. He paused to pinch a nipple, and absorbed the jolt of pleasure into himself with a sigh as he stroked the areola. His other hand moved flat-palmed down his abdomen until he felt the wiry hair nestling his curled penis. He drew his cock into his hand while he stroked his other hand up and down his chest and abdomen, pausing to rub his nipples. He straightened his cock in his hand and murmured wordless pleasure as he caressed the softness of the foreskin encasing its length. His fingers moved with practiced economy to encourage the swelling that made the foreskin fold back, revealing its inner tissue as soft and damp as dewed petals.

His hands knew what he most enjoyed, what touches most excited, yet he shut his eyes and pretended the hands on him were bigger than his own, harder, with tougher calluses than gun practice had put on his fingers. He imagined a mouth pressed against the side of his throat, the damp, insistent swirl of a tongue over his now tense nipple, lips pressing against his belly while a finger pushed inside him and the hand gripped his cock in the final driving thrust. He came with a muted cry that seemed like a scream in the quiet room as his seed drenched only his own shaking fingers.

Panting in the aftermath, feeling bereft and lost in his solitude, his eyes caught on the skull-and-crossbones adorning the label on the brown bottle atop the dresser across the room. Poison. Poison quieted the bees and won him this illusory peace. But poison might also keep those callused hands from ever touching him again.

:::::::

He emerged from the saloon at midday two days later. He'd had a successful run at the poker table the night before and had slept the sleep of the contented. He felt so at peace with the world he didn't hesitate to call to JD when he saw the young man hurrying past.

"Is there a fire about, Mr. Dunne, or are you just loping for your health?"

JD turned large, wary eyes on him, but halted. They hadn't spoken since the day--that day. Both had seemed intent on ignoring the event that had exposed each of them to humiliation. At this point, he didn't care what JD might think of him or, for that matter, if JD thought of him at all.

"Chris and the others got back a couple of hours ago. They think they found the trail. They got something to eat and've been getting supplies, and Chris wants to move out soon as possible on fresh horses. The Trentville posse is searching the wrong area. Chris sent a telegram, but there's no saying how long it might be before they get it."

A surge of anger thrummed along his nerves in time to his heartbeat, but he made an effort to mask his emotion. "How kind of Mr. Larabee to apprise me of the developing situation." He walked past JD into the saloon as though the boy weren't there.

He gathered his things and headed for the livery. All six of the other peacekeepers were present, but his eyes fixed on Chris. He watched the long-fingered hands as they saddled a feisty paint that would serve as Chris's mount until his black was rested. The townspeople and outlying folk offered spare mounts as needed to the men who protected the town. The knuckles on Chris's right hand were scraped raw. A quick scan of the rest of him showed that Chris appeared to be all right, though weary. As he moved into view, Chris's sharp eyes caught on him.

He smiled a challenge into Chris's eyes. "You neglected to inform me of the hour of our departure. How fortunate that JD has superior manners."

"How're you doing, Ezra?" Chris did a far less subtle survey of his person than he had done of Chris.

"I'm in fine fettle, Mr. Larabee, after a most satisfying and lucrative night at cards. Nothing gets the blood flowing quite as well as a group of marks ready and willing to be fleeced, I always find."

"So I heard." Chris spoke in a mild tone that made his hackles rise. "As I hear it, you've been enjoying an astounding run of luck for the past coupla days."

He avoided answering by fetching the gear for his horse. Before he had done more than throw the blanket on the broad back, Chris was at his side, looming over him like a black specter, his voice a murmur.

"I hear tell you made a remarkable quick recovery."

"Recovery? I have no idea what you--"

Chris's grip on his arm was painful as he was jerked to the doorway and Chris peered into his eyes. He pulled away, fury threatening to engulf him, but before he could react, Chris had him pressed against the stable wall.

"Where'd you get it? Not at the Chinaman's; I checked. Told me you'd tried to get in and he sent you away. I believe him. He was too scared to be lying."

"You believe anyone before me." Blinking his watering eyes, he attempted to avoid Chris's gaze.

Chris was usually impossible to divert, and this time was no exception. Chris shook him again, compelling attention, not letting anything be, not Chris.

"Where did you get it?"

"If I had the faintest idea what you were talking about, I--"

Chris flung him off and he stumbled against the wall. He straightened, anger bubbling in his veins and his hands trembling from too much untrammeled passion. He fumbled out his flask and gulped a cool mouthful. Calm seeped back into him, and he got his breathing and the shaking under control. When he looked up, ready to face whatever came next, he realized his mistake. He saw comprehension dawn in Chris's eyes, attempted to slide the flask into his pocket. He was too late. Chris's hand reached out. Knowing the futility of indulging in a scuffle that would only prolong this scene, he let Chris pluck the flask from his fingers.

Chris sniffed the flask, then sipped the contents. He spat out the liquid and held the flask out toward Nathan without removing his burning gaze from Ezra. He stared back, striving to keep his own eyes blank before a man who knew him...perhaps too well.

Nathan also spat out the bitter mouthful. "Laudanum. Opium and alcohol." Disgust tinged his voice.

"You drinking laudanum now instead of whiskey, Ezra?" Buck radiated bemusement.

Breaking the intense, locked gaze with Chris with an effort, he glanced at the men clustered in the background, a bevy of witnesses he could have done without. Vin stood still and watchful, his eyes shifting between him and Chris, while Josiah stared at him with a pensive expression and JD frowned in apparently perpetual confusion. Nathan just looked as disgusted as his voice had sounded.

His chest felt tight, as though he were suffocating, a throb of sorrow mixed with shame and despair making gall clench in his throat.

"Where'd you get it?" Chris's harsh voice drew his attention back to the rigid figure facing him.

He made no attempt to mask his bitterness. "What's it matter?"

Chris's eyes narrowed, but Nathan exclaimed, "The clinic! That's the only place I know round here where anyone could get his hands on laudanum. Dammit, Ezra, did you break into my clinic?"

"But why--" JD whoofed to a halt as Buck's elbow connected with his stomach.

Chris crossed the small space between them and crowded close to him in the corner where he'd stumbled. Close up, Chris's tiredness was even more apparent. The lines around his eyes were deeply etched from hours of squinting against dust and sun. For a bare instant, he thought he glimpsed pain in Chris's bloodshot eyes, but then they hardened and Chris was leaning into him.

"You stealing from your friends now? You lying to us, stealing from us, letting us down, and all you can say is, 'What's it matter?' That all it means to you?"

The smell of Chris surrounded him like a cloud of emotion. The taller man was crowded so close he could feel the heat of his flesh through the canvas duck pants where Chris's hipbone pressed against his side. Anguish ignited in his belly. The panic of loss swept over him before he was able to swamp it with rage instead.

He shoved Chris away and walked with his remaining shreds of dignity away from the corner where he'd been suffocating in feelings. The pause allowed him to summon an air of studied casualness as he faced his audience.

"'Stealing' is an overstatement." Fumbling in his pocket, he retrieved a silver dollar and flipped it toward Nathan. "I'm sure Mr. Jackson will have no trouble replacing what I borrowed."

He had only a moment to absorb the shocked silence and the stares of the six men who faced him as the silver dollar bounced off Nathan's immobile body and spiraled to the ground. Before the spinning coin had come to a rest, Chris was a blur of movement in front of him. A stripe of startlingly intense pain across his chest made him gasp aloud as his shocked mind registered Chris in front of him holding a quirt in an upraised hand. From the searing intensity in his eyes, he knew Chris was about to slash out at him again, but he couldn't move. The passion he'd unleashed mesmerized him like a cobra's prey.

Buck's lanky form interposed itself between him and his view of Chris before the quirt could descend a second time.

"Chris, get a-hold of yourself! I seen you threaten to shoot a man who did less to a horse than you're doing."

The sound of the quirt striking the ground punctuated the end of Buck's urgent words.

Chris's voice was harsh. "Let's ride. We got a job to do."

Horses and men left the livery, leather creaking, the smell of dust and horse growing stronger as they moved into the sun. He fell back against the wall, ignoring the throb across his chest, his vision blank with rage and fear and loss. Alone. He had to be alone. Just wait, and it would be over.

"All right, pard?"

He looked up with an effort and stared at Vin's neutral face. Although he and Vin were only an inch apart in height, he had to stare up a good ways to meet the eyes that looked down at him. With an effort at concentration, he realized he had half-slumped down the wall at his back. It didn't seem worth the effort to straighten.

"Fine."

The standard reply: clipped, flat, and unwelcoming of further inquiry. Vin's eyes dropped from his, and the tracker moved to gather the reins of a rangy bay mare. They were alone in the livery, and the corral outside was empty. As the mare moved into the doorway, the glare of the noon sun was eclipsed.

Vin didn't look in his direction again. "We're heading south. 'spect they're heading for the border, maybe Purgatorio, but we'll make sure of just where they're going and try to roust them if we can. We might be gone a few days, all told."

Fine, he thought, but didn't try to force the sound again from his cottony mouth.

The mare blew noisily in the brief silence before Vin led her outside, mounted, and rode after the others. When he was alone, he slumped down onto his heels and pressed his hand against the burning sensation on his torso. He looked down at himself, but couldn't see any blood. Opening his shirt, he found the quirt had done little actual damage. His vest and shirt had absorbed most of the energy of the blow, though it was a testament to Chris's fury that he had struck with enough force to raise an eight-inch welt on his chest nonetheless. He stared at the red, raised mark for a sick moment before buttoning the shirt with shaking fingers and pressing himself to his feet.

It was time to go. _Cut your losses and leave while the leaving's good if a con goes bad._ Thank you, Mother, for your pearls of maternal wisdom.

_Don't ever run out on me again._

Blackness tinged the edges of his vision and the bees droned their awakening in his head. He pressed his fingers into his eyes, but composed himself when he heard heavy footsteps and looked up to see the hulking livery-man moving inside.

"Everything all right, Mr. Standish?"

He bent to pick up his flask and the silver dollar, lying abandoned near each other. He pocketed the flask and flipped the coin to the livery-man.

"Everything is perfectly well, Tiny. Would you settle my horse for me, please, sir, and give him some extra fodder. I'll be requiring him shortly."

He moved into the blinding sunshine and fresher air outside, his preoccupied mind barely registering Tiny's thanks for so generous a gratuity in return for so small a task. Tainted money; he knew he wouldn't have been able to touch the coin again. From whence had come this damnable attachment of emotion to mere coinage? Ridiculous. Yet the sense that he had imbued the coin with insult by tossing it at Nathan seemed inescapable. It was long past time he left this place. He'd somehow changed during his months here and in his association with these people. He could no longer get his bearings, was no longer certain just who or what he was, or what he expected of life, or even what he most wanted.

Yet he couldn't seem to fan the needed urgency within himself. He trudged down the street toward the saloon to gather his belongings, but paused and turned to head instead to the church. The door was unlocked. Josiah would never think of barring anyone who might wish to seek solace in the church any more than he would consider the building itself his property. He stood in the aisle between the pews looking at the sun streaming in the colored window and bathing the wooden pulpit in red light. Two candles burned on the table to the right. Catholics in the area lit candles and incense, Presbyterians intoned passages from the Good Book in workaday English, and other denominations pursued whatever practices made them feel close to God. He wasn't a religious man, but he felt the hard-won serenity in this place. It was as tangible as though it emanated from the soul of Josiah himself, the demon-beset sinner who warred with his own acknowledged weaknesses.

He ran a hand over the back of a pew. He fancied he could sense the actual love in the hours of labor that had wrought the wood into that silken smoothness. His hand moved in another spate of involuntary twitching, and he slid into the seat and clasped them together in his lap. He had time for a short delay. The others would be gone for several days, and there was no one left in town who would try to stop him from leaving.

That was, naturally, assuming that any one of the other six would try to stop him either.

He'd never before seen the degree of mingled fury and betrayal that had been in Chris's eyes when he'd lifted the quirt. It had almost seemed personal, which couldn't be true. There was nothing intimate between them. Just sex. Just couplings in the dark. Just hard flesh pressing on hard, unyielding flesh and strong, callused hands trailing fire over each other's heated skin. Emotion didn't figure into the issue. Rather, it was a matter of nerve-endings in the skin responding instinctively to sensation cleverly applied, and the combined sensual power of taste and sight and smell to overwhelm rational thought. They were merely two disparate bodies who came together in the dark for brief, albeit intense, intervals.

He fumbled the flask from his pocket. He unstoppered it, feeling its lightness. Almost empty. He paused with it not quite at his lips. The thought of the foul-tasting tincture sickened him like the taste of shame and weakness itself, and he stoppered it and thrust the flask away. He'd fought free of it before, and he could do so again, but not here. He needed to be alone. He had enough winnings from the last couple of days to pay for lodgings in some town, some place...somewhere...else. Someplace where he would be unknown, without expectations weighing on him and opprobrium darkening familiar eyes. Someplace where he could rebuild his shattered defenses and reconstruct himself in the old, well-worn form. He chuckled wryly. Even over the growing headache and the burn of the brand across his chest and the tiny, flaring cramps in his muscles, he recognized the irony in his sitting in the place where Josiah tried to remake himself as a better man and plan his own return to a lonelier, emptier, less caring form of himself.

When he left the empty church with lingering regret, the sun had moved several degrees to the west. He checked his watch, and hurried toward the saloon. If he didn't leave right away, he might not manage the feat at all. The work of only a few minutes found him ready to leave, the few essential items he owned pushed into his saddlebags. When he was back on his feet--had himself in order, as Chris would put it in his quaint way--he'd be able to replace the items he had to abandon. He regretted leaving behind the tailored coats and the fine shirts and vests, but he couldn't think of anyone in the entire town whom he could ask to keep them for him until he sent for them. No one in town at the moment, at any rate.

He paused when he found a distinctive metal filigree button in a drawer. It had come off Chris's shirt one night a few weeks previously. He'd found it the next morning, after Chris had departed, as usual, before dawn. He'd meant to return it, but had kept forgetting. It was from that Longhorn bib shirt Chris favored--the one he hadn't worn recently. He felt a pang and closed his hand hard on the button for a moment, squeezing until it pinched, before slipping it into his pocket. No telling who might venture into his room once they realized he was gone, and find it, and construe things Chris didn't need revealed.

He turned his back on the room and the saloon and his months there without a backward glance and strode toward the livery. What transpired next proceeded in a jumble. He was crossing the street when he noticed a number of horses gathered outside the First National Bank a few yards from him. One grubby individual sat atop a gray with a rifle across his thighs and the narrowed eyes of a watchman surveying the area. The rest of the horses in his vicinity had no riders. His stomach fluttered with a rush of adrenaline as he slowed his steps. Couldn't be. They couldn't possibly be robbing the bank in broad daylight just coincidentally when the rest of the lawmen were away. He was making a quick count of the horses--eight--and weighing the odds--not good--when a high voice drew his attention.

"Ezra!"

Addie Sorensen was hurrying down the three steps to the street outside Potter's Mercantile. Distracted, he took his eyes off the bank and moved to meet her.

"Ezra, see my bonnet? It's my new one, from the East."

"And very lovely it is, my dear."

He took her arm, but froze as a scream sounded from the bank, followed by shots and yells. Men burst from the building, leaping for their mounts with practiced speed and kicking them into motion. Even as he registered that they were wheeling around to come in his direction, he was propelling Addie toward the dubious cover of a water barrel at the side of the street, but had to pause when she fell. With no other choice, he stood over her and drew the Remington from his holster.

"Addie, move! Get behind the barrel!"

Instead of movement, he felt a clutch around his leg and realized she was too terrified to move on her own. He fired a shot for distraction, winging one man. As the man screeched and the horse slewed around, causing a momentary mill, he reached down and grabbed Addie's arm. Heaving her up and away from his leg was a harder task than he had counted on, and the first riders were upon them before he'd managed to do more than drag her to her feet. A gun was aimed at them, and he flung Addie down again, behind him, and fired off a shot that went wild as pain exploded in his arm. His gun fell from nerveless fingers and he looked down to see the haft of a knife sticking out of the muscle in his right upper arm. He looked into a gun barrel that yawned the size of a cannon mouth and felt the bitterness of defeat drench him in sweat.

"That bastard shot me!"

A horse shouldered aside the one from which the gun was aimed and a booted foot kicked out, catching him in the forehead. He fell to his hands and knees, aware of terrified whimpering gasps he hazily knew must be from Addie, who seemed now to be clinging to the arm with the knife in it. Pain made him woozy, but he closed his left hand on a handful of dirt and managed to fling it into the face of a man who grabbed his hair and wrenched his head up. He heard a yell above him, and, freed, made another effort to propel Addie toward the side of the street, only to have her tugged from his grasp.

"Well, lookee what we got here. You ever seen such a honey pot? What say we takes her with us? I ain't had no fun in a godawful long time."

Addie was emitting tiny squeals at a furious speed, hardly seeming to pause for breath, while coarse laughter rose around them.

Oh, no. No. Absolutely not.

He hunched over on his knees, ignoring his dangling right arm, and managed to retrieve the Richards from the holster under his left arm, shielding the movement from sight with his body. His first, rapid shot should have hit the man holding Addie dead center in his forehead, but a horse shifted into the way and the bullet scored a runnel in a flank. He didn't get a second shot. As the injured horse reared and whinnied and Addie squealed and dust swirled across his vision, a man on a barrel-chested pinto clubbed him across the face with a rifle stock and spoke with impatient authority in a gravelly voice: "Bring 'em both. Ride!"

Barely conscious, he felt himself dragged up and hoisted face down across a saddlebow. The last thing he was aware of before sliding into unconsciousness was Addie's squeals having changed into a piping, terrified chant of his name.

Waking to the sensation of hot vomit flowing from his mouth, he had no idea how long they'd been riding. He gagged and spat, managing not to choke, and rode out the slap of a hand across the back of his head as the man on whose horse he was being transported cursed. Fortune decreeing he had little in his stomach to lose, he was able to swallow the rest of his bile and not annoy his host further. He couldn't hear Addie any more, but he wasn't going to do anything that would get him separated from her or killed before he could figure out some way to get them free. Preferably sooner rather than later.

Later didn't bear thinking about.

They rode until about an hour before sunset, which he calculated made it a good five hours since they'd left town. A comfortable distance away, especially from a town without any present residents who were likely to come after them. He wondered if the gang had planned the timing of their foray into Four Corners to match the absence of the peacekeepers, or if it had been blind luck. Considering the way fortune had favored them in the street--or ill-favored him, perhaps--it could just have been luck.

He was dumped unceremoniously to the ground when the leader called a halt. He landed on dusty rock and closed his eyes at the jar in his right arm. By the time his head had cleared, he was being dragged over to a cottonwood tree by a riata knotted around his wrists. The braided buckskin dug into his flesh, and he couldn't help gasping as he was shoved to the ground. The end of the riata was secured around a thick branch above his head. A moment later, a blue figure propelled itself at him and plump arms took a stranglehold around his neck. As he fought against blacking out at the awakened pain in his arm, he felt her tears trickling down his neck inside his shirt collar.

"Ezra, Ezra, Ezra, Ezra," a high-pitched squeal intoned continuously in his ear.

"It's all right, Addie, it'll be all right." He spoke absently, automatically, as he darted his eyes about the area for any information he could glean.

They were in an arroyo cut by a creek surrounded with vegetation the horses were already chomping. Men wandered the area gathering sagebrush for a fire and spreading bedrolls. The leader was squatted on his hams counting the haul while the others cast avaricious looks, but kept their distance.

Bottles were extracted from saddlebags and his stomach sank. As bad as his and Addie's prospects were at the moment, once the men were liquored up, those prospects would become decidedly worse. Considering his own position gave him little hope. His head was throbbing from the two blows and his arm was agony each time he moved. He still had his ace in the hole, but unfortunately the derringer on the sleeve rig was strapped to his right arm, which was presently useless. First things first.

"Addie." He pitched his voice low, hoping not to attract any attention, and kept one eye on the men roaming about. "Addie, listen to me, now. I need your help. My arm is hurt, and I need you to help me. Do you think you can help me, Miss Addie?"

"I want to go home!" She was barely able to form coherent words through her sobs, yet clung to him with surprising strength. "I want my mama! Take me home, Ezra. Please take me home!"

"Soon. I will. I promise. But I can't until you help me take care of my arm. It's very important, Addie. I know you can do it, now. Show me what a big, brave girl you are. Your mama'll be real proud of you, and so will I."

"No, I can't. I want to go home!"

Her voice was rising, and he soothed her and shushed her. He laid his head back against the tree and watched as the men prepared a pot of beans to go over the fire while she continued to sob tears down his neck. Taking a breath, he turned back and whispered again in her ear.

"I'm in an awful lot of pain, Miss Addie. My arm hurts an awful lot. I'd be real obliged if you could make it feel better for me. Just sit up now and do what I say, all right?"

"Take me home?"

"I can't until you fix my arm."

It took long minutes of cajoling and explaining to get her to extract the handkerchief from his inside coat pocket, and even longer before she managed to roll it and tie a large knot as near the center as she could manage. Getting her to take hold of the blood-slick knife and pull it out was even more difficult. He struggled to keep his voice low and soothing, not to frighten her, as his headache mounted and the twitching and cramps of his need made themselves known. When she eventually pulled out the knife and dropped it with a mewling wail of distress at the blood on her fingers, he had to talk her through tying the handkerchief around his arm as firmly as possible with the knot pressing against the wound. All the while, he kept an eye on the men with their beans and bottles and loot as night fell and the arroyo became lit with the flickering light of the large fire. They appeared to have no worries about pursuit, and they'd chosen a dip that would probably hide the fire from anyone at a distance.

He almost passed out when he finally got her to pull the handkerchief tight around the wound. The knife had stopped it bleeding much, so at least he hadn't already lost a significant amount of blood; that would start now, though the handkerchief would slow it. Best he could manage, in the circumstances. He wasn't likely to bleed to death; he doubted they would have that much time.

"Your face is all blood, too, Ezra."

"I know. It's all right, really. Don't you worry about that. You did a fine job on my arm. I'm proud of you, Miss Addie."

He absently rubbed his face against his shoulder to wipe off as much of the sticky blood as he could as his thoughts raced elsewhere. The riata was tight around his wrists, but he had the knife she'd dropped hidden under his boot. His right arm felt more numb than painful at the moment. Just the grace of a little more time and he might be able to free himself.

Time and luck, however, were no more gracious now than they had been for a good while. One of the men, tequila bottle in hand, crossed the distance from the fire and stood over them, a dark, swaying silhouette backlit by the fire. Addie cowered against his right side, sending waves of pain washing over him each time she pushed against his arm. He had stopped sawing at the riata as soon as the man appeared and kept his boot over the knife.

"Mills, what'cha doin'? Bring that purty little gal over here and let's have us a party!"

"No!"

The man glanced at him just long enough to laugh, took another swallow from the bottle, then reached down and dragged Addie to her feet by a hard grip on her wrist. She screamed and struggled, reaching out her free arm toward Ezra, and the man jerked her step-by-step to the fire as though he were snapping a catch-rope in the air repeatedly. She re-commenced squealing, and, out of choices, Ezra surged to his feet and plunged toward the fire. He was brought up short three feet away at the end of the length of riata. Someone in the background laughed.

The leader's flinty eyes settled on him. "What d'ya think you're doin', boy?"

The man had the growl of a bear in a whipcord-thin frame as tall as Buck's. The freckled, unprepossessing, dirty face was topped by thinning ginger hair, the small eyes sharp with untutored acuity. Ezra looked straight into them and pasted on his most charming con man's smile.

"Offering you an option, sir."

"An option? What the hell's that?" one of the others laughed.

He kept the blood-smeared side of his face turned to the shadows, refusing to dwell on how grisly he might presently look. Injecting all the allure he had at his disposal into both his look and his voice, he kept his eyes meshed with the leader's. "A good deal. A much better deal than the young lady can offer you. A much better time. A much more fulfilling and...exotic experience. I can offer you, gentlemen, a night you won't forget."

"What the hell's he sayin'?" an inebriated voice demanded.

The leader looked him up and down with appreciation glinting in his fire-lit face. Ezra made his pose as much of an inducement to linger in certain places as he could under the circumstances, and was rewarded when the small eyes did just that. When he had completed his survey, the man met his eyes with something like humor lurking in them. Lifting the bottle to his lips, the leader maintained the connection with him as he drank. Ezra parted his mouth and ran his tongue suggestively over his dry lips, and he saw the amusement deepen.

Leaning back and still watching him, the man spoke lazily. "He's offerin' us his ass in place of the little lady's cunt."

He took a breath, fighting to make his voice into a sultry caress evocative of steamy New Orleans nights. "Ah, but not just my ass. My mouth can give you delights you've never imagined. My experience, gentlemen, will assure you the night of your lives."

"What? Him instead of her?" a voice spluttered, and laughter drowned out even Addie's squealing sobs.

The leader stood with a lithe movement and stepped close enough to him that they were plastered against each other front to front. He could feel the bulge at the man's crotch when the fellow moved his hips against him with a sharp thrust. He kept his desperation masked and gazed into the sharp, small eyes with all the sensuality he knew how to project. He again touched his lips with the tip of his tongue, wishing he had some moisture to go with the action.

"I just bet you could." The gravelly voice raised the hackles on his nape as rank breath puffed against his face like a sour wind off a swamp. "And I'd be tempted to take you up on the offer, in different circumstances. Unfortunately, my men aren't equipped to appreciate the more...sophisticated pleasures. As pretty as you are, you can't compete with luscious curves and a virgin cunt--and the sweetness of terror."

With a rough jab, the man sent him sprawling in the dirt. Ignoring the blinding surge of pain, he struggled to gain his feet with his hands tied in front of him and made it to his knees as the leader was turning away.

"No, don't! Please!" If that's what it would take, he'd beg and place on display every ounce of terror he'd ever known.

The leader stood sideways on to him, tilting his head back and the bottle to his mouth but keeping his eyes on him.

"She's just a child. She looks grown up, but in her mind, she's a little child. Don't do it. I'll do whatever you want, _anything_ you want. Name it, and I'll do it. She's an innocent child, for the Lord's sake!"

"And all the sweeter for it." Laughter consumed the man's entire face now. He took a couple of steps away, but paused to look back at him. "But don't worry: I'll keep your offer in mind--for later."

With a deep growl of a laugh it didn't seem possible could issue from such a skinny chest, the man strode straight to Addie, dragged her away from the fellow who was holding her, and fondled her over-ripe bosom while bending his head to her neck.

Ezra scrambled back to the cottonwood, searching desperately for the knife in the sandy soil. Addie was screaming his name over and over again. He gritted his teeth as he avoided looking at what was happening to her. Concentrate. The knife. Find the knife. Get free. Do something right. God, do something right for once.

Sweat dripped into his eyes, and his hands were shaking so badly he dropped the knife when he finally found it by touch before his eyes had readjusted to the dark beyond the fire. He snatched the knife up in his left hand and took a moment to calm himself with a steadying breath before turning the knife and sawing it against the riata. He was shaking all over, with a chill or from shock or perhaps from the need for the opiate that was making his gut clench and the bees buzz angrily in his head and one muscle after another cramp or twitch. Concentrate. Don't look at what was happening. Oh, Lord.

Addie screamed piercingly, and he jumped. The knife slipped from the riata and cut his hand. He couldn't stop himself from looking toward the fire where Addie lay pinned on the ground amidst a circle of men awaiting their turns with varying degrees of impatience. The fire made the leader's hair ruddy as he bent his head to nip at a large, exposed breast. Her bodice was ripped open, her skirt was bunched up above her waist, and her drawers were pulled off and cast aside, a shine of white against the dirt. The leader's narrow, pale rump moved in a hard mating rhythm between her thick, white, feebly kicking legs.

He dragged his eyes away. Concentrate. Try to shut out the way she was screaming his name. If only she'd stop crying his name. If only the bees would stop buzzing. If only he'd left immediately instead of mooning about in the church. She'd never have seen him, she'd never have dashed into the street at that ill-fated moment if only he'd left sooner.

If only he hadn't clung to the conviction that he could handle everything on his own and denied the mute offer of assistance Chris's eyes had been telegraphing for weeks. Everything lost because of his fear of trusting. He could accept his own life being in ruins, because he had never expected anything else, not of himself. Nor had he expected anything else of Chris. He could admit that at this desperate moment when he was stripped raw of walls and subterfuge, as he carved at the rope and tried to shut his ears to what was happening at the fire. He'd decided in his mind what Chris wanted of him, and he'd stuck to that image of what they were to each other, or what they might be. He'd fallen to fear and cowardliness in the face of someone trying to reach inside his boundaries. No one else had ever tried to get inside the walls with him; no one else had ever wanted to know the person who lived hidden.

It made no sense that Chris would want that. What could Chris of all people see in him that was worth pursuing, other than his body and his skills between the sheets? It was just sex between them. It didn't mean any more to Chris than that beast over there thrusting his engorged cock into the convenient orifice. Chris was just gentler about assuaging his body's drives. That's all. Just...gentler.

He squeezed his eyes shut and wiped the slippery blood off the knife onto his pant leg. Several cuts on his hands were bleeding now. The problem with a riata is that it's a tough, solid rope. His chances of sawing through it with the knife at this awkward angle and with blood making his fingers slip were slim.

Addie wasn't screaming his name any more. Now, she was calling for her mama in a hopeless, childish wail.

He gritted his teeth and refused to look toward the fire. Concentrate. The laudanum might help. A sip to calm his shaking, stop the nausea and the cramps. If he could just reach the flask from his pocket-- No. No more. No more retreats into shame, no more seeking support that wasn't strength, but weakness. How often during his life had he made things worse, then decamped? Just as he'd meant to do this time.

_Don't ever run out on me again._

Chris, of course, always expected too much of people. He expected loyalty, and that people would fulfill their bargains. He expected them to be decent and to care. He expected them to be willing to fight for what was important and that those things deemed important would have intrinsic, incalculable value.

Implicit in all their dealings was Chris's expectation that he, Ezra, would find something more important than money and winning and constantly working the angles for his own advantage. That he'd find something more to trust in than his own cynicism and abilities, and that he would learn to depend on others so others could depend on him. _Don't ever run out on me again._ But that had been about their working relationship, not...the other.

Not that there was any other. Certainly wouldn't be now. Chris would know he'd meant to leave. His saddlebags were lying in the middle of the street; Chris would draw the right conclusion when he heard even if no one else knew what they meant. Though there wasn't anything to run out on, anyway. He'd been denied his place to ride with them, and the other--the other was just sex between men who harbored no illusions and no false and inappropriate ties of sentimentality.

To trust there could be something more between them would be tantamount to leaping into an uncharted void without any assurance beyond faith that a hand would be there waiting to catch him.

One day, he'd stop aching at the thought of never again seeing the sensuous look on Chris's fine-honed features as he lowered his face to kiss him everywhere except on the mouth, the intimacy Ezra at the last had denied them both from self-protection. When their times alone together acquired unexpectedly heated intensity beyond the sexual, he'd fled. Kissing Chris had ignited such a plethora of longing that he'd feared letting slip all touch with rational expectations, and losing himself. At this desperate moment when his masks and contrivances had all fallen away, he felt the keenness of regret as cutting as grief.

The knife was slick with blood flowing from the nicks and cuts on his hands, which now shook unremittingly. He raged with frustration as he admitted his weaknesses were going to defeat him once again, and this time he'd brought someone else down with him. A louder wail from the fire drew his smarting eyes, and he watched with bitter anger as a pair of drunken louts tossed Addie back and forth between them in a grotesque parody of a dance as another fellow played a kind of jig on a Jew's harp.

He closed his eyes and turned his head away. No point in going through the entire ordeal with her. Wouldn't do her any good. No more good than trying to carve through rawhide that was now damp with blood.

Rawhide. Wet rawhide. He felt a feral grin settle on his face as he dropped the knife and concentrated on forcing his wrists apart. Yes, it worked, there was give in the riata now. Rawhide stretched when it got wet. How could he have forgotten? Even braided rawhide would stretch if it got wet enough. He tried to spit to hasten matters but his mouth was too dry, so he worked instead on aggravating the myriad shallow cuts on his hands.

By the time the men had finished amusing themselves and one of them dragged a limp Addie over and dumped her on top of him, he had worked his aching hands free of the rope. He had re-knotted the rope loosely, and he kept his hands in the darkness of his lap as the swaying man approached. The fellow was too liquored up to do more than take a cursory look at him before stumbling back to the fire and falling down on his blankets.

Addie was a trembling, frighteningly mute weight on him as he freed his aching right arm from under her and lifted his tied hands to touch her cheek. Her face was hot and damp. She whimpered and flinched, but didn't try to move.

He pitched his voice as soft and comforting as he could manage. "Addie, it's Ezra. It's all over, now, darling. It's over."

"Hurt me." Her whimper was the dazed voice of a child who has lived her life sheltered from all harm.

"I know, but it's over now. Try to sleep. It'll be better if you can sleep."

"Ezra?"

"Yes, it's me, it's all right now. Here, darling, can you shift over just a little, sit on my other side? That's a girl. Try to go to sleep."

"They tore my shimmie, and I don't have any drawers."

"I know, Miss Addie, but it's all right. I'll buy you the prettiest chemise you've ever seen. Just try to do what I say, darling."

He fumbled to pull the torn bodice closed across her chest, wincing as he saw a deep bite mark on one breast. Only a handful of buttons remained to fasten the fabric. He did the best he could, and pulled her close to him.

She clutched at his coat with a death-grip and pressed her face into his neck. "Hurts."

He swallowed painfully and took a moment to make sure his voice would be steady. "What hurts?"

"Down...there."

She sobbed, but quietly, as though she'd learned a lesson about making too much noise. He realized he hadn't even noticed when she'd stopped wailing, and felt guilt rise to choke him. She'd been through it all alone, everything they'd done to her, the big things he knew about and the smaller ones he'd never know because he'd shut it all out to protect himself, as he always did. Even now, he didn't want to know if all the men had taken her or if drunkenness had spared her the attention of some of them.

He leaned a little and managed to extract the flask from his left coat pocket. He grimaced as he braced it in his right arm and removed the cap with his left hand, ignoring the flare of pain. For a moment, desire was almost overwhelming. A single sip. Just a taste, to soothe the bees and the cramp and the nausea and chase the fire ants off his skin. The flask shook in his grip as he closed his eyes and fought for control of himself. There wasn't enough for both of them.

"Here, Miss Addie, drink this. It tastes very bad, but it'll make the hurting stop."

For a little while, at least. With encouragement, she finally took two swallows that emptied the flask. He settled her shivering body against him as he slipped the flask regretfully back into his pocket. At least it would probably help her sleep. She'd need the rest, and he needed her quiet and at peace. He wished he could wrap his coat around her, but he didn't dare remove it. His white shirtsleeves might show in the dark and alert the men to his being free.

He'd decided they were north of town and could only hope they'd kept to a fairly straight route during the time he was unconscious. When the moon rose, it verified what he'd gleaned from the position the sun had set. Five hours' ride north in country he didn't know. Their chances were appalling, but that had never stopped him before. He felt an almost manic glee at the thought of tilting his abilities against the beanpole leader's, until he remembered Addie and the way she was dependent on him, and all sense of rising to the challenge faded.

Covert and quiet was the only chance. He waited until the moon set, waited an hour after that. The camp grew still, only the sounds of nocturnal animals leavening the snoring with small scrabblings or cries. The man who was supposed to be on watch as the dark pre-dawn approached was slumped over and appeared to be as asleep as the rest when he discarded the riata and woke Addie with a hand pressed over her mouth. He placed his lips to her ear and spoke with honeyed but urgent reassurance, encouraging her up and putting an arm around her when she swayed. The sandy ground muffled their footsteps. They made it to the horses tethered upwind near the creek without disturbing any of the sleepers.

The only good odds lay in speed. He had to release all the horses and get himself and Addie onto two at the same time or they wouldn't have a hope of escaping pursuit. He saddled the first he came to, pausing only to gulp water from a canteen and hand it to Addie, praying all the while to a deity in which he had no belief, and to Lady Fortuna in whom he had always believed, to keep the beasts silent. A single whicker breaking the stillness, and one of the men might rouse. As soon as the horse was saddled, he forced Addie up, boosting her into the saddle and putting the reins into her shaking hands.

She squirmed and whimpered. "Hurts--"

"You have to ride when I tell you, Addie." He made his whisper as sharp as he could. "You _have_ to ride. You ride and keep riding and you don't stop until you're home. You go that direction. Understand? The sun will be up soon, and you keep it on your left. _This_ side, Addie. Remember! Keep the sun on _this side_ all the time."

"Ezra--"

"You ride home and don't stop for anything."

He had pulled the other horses free of their tethers, retaining a hold on one bridle and not taking the time to saddle the second horse--at which point, luck deserted him again. A loud whinny from one of the beasts down the line set off answering whickers from two others and a restless shuffling of hoofs. A glance toward the dying fire showed at least one of the men stirring, a head lifting in query. Cursing under his breath, he abandoned his faint hope of leading them away from the camp before they set off running.

He scrambled gracelessly onto the horse, hauling himself up with the power of fear coursing in his veins, grabbed Addie's reins and kicked his mount into motion. Riding the two horses into the others made the other six scatter, and he encouraged the minor stampede with well-placed kicks. He drove several of them across the creek and was just entering the water himself when a hand grabbed his leg. He pulled the derringer from his left pocket where he'd placed it hours before, after taking it from the sleeve rig, and shot the man in the face. Warm blood spattered his leg, but he barely felt it as he kicked his horse into motion and led Addie across the stream and up the rocky incline marking the southern ridge of the arroyo. Guns banged behind them, and he released Addie's reins as they reached the top of the incline.

"Run, Addie! Keep the sun on your left! Go!"

The eastern edge of the sky was hazing with red as he started down the incline after Addie, who was already working up to a gallop. A remote part of his brain remembered to be grateful that Addie spent a fair bit of time with Casey out at the Wells ranch, riding. He and Addie might have been able to escape riding double, but he didn't think it likely.

Bending low over the horse's neck, he was marveling that the insane plan might actually work when his horse screamed and toppled onto its side with a convulsive jerk. Without stirrups to impede him, he was able to propel himself out of the way of being crushed, but he landed hard on his right arm and fought out of a pain-reddened fog to find a .45 Colt aimed at his forehead. Someone was yelling at someone else about killing the damn horse instead of the man riding it, and curses in various voices peppered the air. He risked a look over his shoulder and felt a shimmer of relief at seeing Addie had outdistanced any possible threat of recapture by men afoot. If she could only remember to keep heading south and not get confused, and remember after the first panic to slow her horse to a lope to pace it, she might be all right.

Unless, of course, she missed Four Corners because it wasn't due south. But at least she had a chance.

Which was more, he decided, as the leader strode up and kicked him in the stomach, than he had.

He attributed his survival of the next couple of hours to the outlaws' primary need to retrieve the horses. Two of the beasts hadn't gone far, preferring to stay near the water, and were recovered with minimal trouble. Two men saddled up and went in search of the strays. Addie, he was pretty sure, would not be a priority. She also had a good head start, and he felt safe to stop worrying about her since he couldn't do anything more for her. With two men gone and one dead, that left him alone with five angry men with a score to settle. Or perhaps, from their point of view, a number of scores.

A bullet in the head apparently being more than he could hope for, he was instead stripped of his coat, vest, and boots--the leader ordering a belated search for hidden weapons--and had his hands tied tightly behind his back. As his right arm was now a fiery mass of swollen flesh, he only barely managed to hang onto consciousness as it was jerked. A catch-rope was tightened around his neck and he was left in a sprawl beside the embers of the fire for any and all to cuff, kick, drag about, and spit on at will. The situation appeared, he might hazard, grim. He wondered with feverish humor how Chris might go about restoring himself to order in such a predicament.

Not that Chris would have gotten himself into such a predicament, nor would any of the others. Well, perhaps young Mr. Dunne, but then young Mr. Dunne had the excuse of unseasoned youth to explain his occasionally hot-headed behavior and its unfortunate consequences. Galling to reflect that even young Mr. Dunne had never managed to get himself into quite such a mess as this one.

His grasp of time slipped as the sun rose in the sky, so he wasn't sure just when he was jerked up onto his knees and found himself staring into the leader's freckled face mere inches from his own. Rancor, he discovered, hadn't improved the fellow's breath at all. The gravelly voice was low with menace.

"You know, my pretty, the boys wanna stake you out, put a few bullets in you, and leave you for the sun to finish off. It seems to be the favorite of the various plans for your future that've been suggested. I like it, too. But I've decided we're gonna delay that part of things until after we've made use of the option you offered us last night. With luck, you'll bleed to death without wasting any of our bullets."

The eyes were mean and the nondescript face hard. Time to play his remaining hole card. If only it weren't _that_ hole card: the one left when he'd exhausted every other resource. He sighed, then summoned the energy to produce his most insolent smile. Exaggerating the arrogance in his Georgia drawl came with practiced ease.

"Unfortunately, sir, your disregard of oral cleanliness coupled with your inept loss of your hostage has compelled me to withdraw my offer. Perhaps you'll find an equine partner who would welcome, and might even return, your amorous intentions. They are, after all, accustomed to the smell of manure."

He saw a moment's incomprehension in the narrowed eyes, but the man was smart enough to know when he was being insulted, even in ten-dollar words. No, actually, he'd managed only five-dollar elocution at best this time. He watched as the man's hand rose and braced himself, knowing it would hurt. Ah, fuck. If he'd been in full possession of his faculties, he would undoubtedly have managed the degree of obnoxiousness required to drive the fellow straight to the killing fury that had been his only hope of escaping hours of torment. Instead, he appeared to have incited nothing but another beating.

All out of cons and hole cards, he closed his eyes in resignation and waited.

The loud retort of a gun made him flinch, as did the sudden spurt of blood fanning hot across his face. More gunfire sounded. He was trying to make sense of it when a hard body hit him and he slammed to the ground. Gritting his teeth to hold back a scream, he rode out the pain while trying to fathom the chaos engulfing him. As he regained use of his vision, he saw crouching in front of him a figure wearing a caped buckskin coat and slouch hat over long, rippled hair that looked just like Vin's. How strange. Now he must be hallucinating. A turn of his head showed him a cowboy behind him on one knee sighting along a Peacemaker. Surely no one but Buck would own, never mind actually wear knotted around his neck in public, a wildrag the color of Maiden's Blush tea roses.

"I'm outnumbered," he croaked, as he heard the rapid firing of two guns that sounded very much like JD's twin Lightnings to his left and saw a dark-clad form of aching familiarity crouched at his right side, completing the box around him, "and surrounded."

"Ezra?"

"I surrender." And, with a happy jocularity that confirmed he was entirely off his head, he sank into a powerful and welcome darkness.

Waking was less welcome. Though "waking" didn't describe the situation as well as "wakings" would. A series of bleary awakenings, each worse than the last, or so each managed to seem. He tried to blank out each brief but miserable occurrence, retaining only the barest memories of those fractured moments. Hours of semi-consciousness rocking in hell on a horse, bent forward over the neck with only a stern voice in the red-streaked darkness making him aware enough to keep hold of the saddle horn, telescoped into a time that seemed to stretch to eternity and yet pass in moments.

Voices from close on either side of him told him things he listened to only because it was simpler than trying to ignore their insistence: Chris's voice ordering him to hold on and not let go. Vin's telling him to drink, accompanied by the utter sweetness of as much brackish water from a canteen as he wanted. Chris's assuring him--several times, if memory served, which it might not--that Addie was safe, that Nathan had taken her back to town, which was too confusing to work out. Vin's telling him to stop pushing the damn hat off, that there was no one out here to see how ridiculous he looked wearing it and he needed the protection from the sun.

Which brought him to an eventual awakening in a place that was blessedly without movement and without sun beating on him. He lay supine on a mattress with cotton rather than leather and sweaty horseflesh against his body. It was still hot, or he was, and there was still pain, but the dreadful thirst was gone and the bees in his head were slumbering.

He opened his eyes and looked at dusky blue for a moment before he lifted his gaze and saw Chris's worn features. Even with his palpable weariness, however, Chris produced a smile that crinkled his eyes and lifted the corners of his mouth.

"You're back." Chris's voice rasped with tiredness, but was imbued with warmth.

He had a vivid memory of a previous awakening in this place--Nathan's clinic, a glance around confirmed--and talk of putrefaction in his arm and the agony of a heated knife cutting into him and the smell of his own burning flesh. He shuddered and turned his head to the right. Bandages bulked around his upper arm, which was resting on a pillow, but he could see his fingers below. He closed his eyes in dizzy relief.

A damp cloth cooled his face while Chris's husky voice stroked his ears. "Arm should heal up all right now, long as we're careful, though you'll have quite a scar. Nathan had to cut away the rotted flesh."

He remembered hands holding him still and Chris's quiet, steady voice weaving a spell of security for him to cling to in the pain-filled dark, never abandoning him for a moment during the entire ordeal.

He managed a croak of a voice, worrying at something elusive that seemed undone. "Addie."

"She's home with her ma. Hurt and scared, and she lost some blood, but the midwife looked at her and says she should recover. At least physically." Chris paused, then added, in a neutral tone, "You gave her laudanum."

He risked a glance up. Chris's face was watchful and unreadable.

He licked his lips. "Not much. There wasn't much left."

"Nathan thinks it probably helped the shock."

And that was such a relief that his eyes closed and his breath puffed from him. When he looked again at Chris, he knew from the steady gaze that Chris had known he'd be worrying about possibly having done the wrong thing. He struggled between panic and wonder at being known that well, that intimately. He took refuge from emotional whirlpools in thinking of Addie.

"I promised--" He frowned as his voice faded.

Chris bent over him, sliding a hand under his neck and lifting his head, then letting him take his time sipping delicious mouthfuls of water. When Chris lowered him to the pillow and sat back in the chair, he tried again.

"I promised to get her a new chemise."

"I'll take care of it."

"The prettiest one you can find."

A callused finger stroked down his cheek before Chris drew away. "Don't worry about anything, Ezra. Trust me."

_Trust_. A nickel word with fifty-dollar connotations. He looked around the empty room to avoid acknowledging the wariness in Chris's tired eyes.

"Where's everyone?"

"They're sorting out the remaining business of the Crow gang. Buck, Josiah, and JD stayed behind to bring the prisoners in while Vin and I brought you here fast. They got back with 'em this morning."

Crow? The Crow gang.

"That was Tucker Crow?"

Chris sighed. He stood and paced to the window, gazing out with his back turned. "I suppose you never bothered to look at the posters that come in."

Of course he hadn't; he hadn't been aware of much of anything the past few weeks. Oh, Lordy. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes and tried to ease the tension in his neck with a roll of his head, but all it did was jar his arm and make him swim through pain for a few moments before he surfaced to stare at the tension evident in Chris's broad shoulders.

"We caught up with the group we was trailing only to find they'd split up," Chris was saying. "The main group had circled back to town. Robbed the bank, grabbed you and Addie, and lit out north. We followed until the light went, and hit the trail again at dawn. Within an hour, we saw Addie barreling along. Nathan brung her back to town while the rest of us went after you."

Chris turned around and leaned against the windowsill, looking at him. His voice was quiet. "You did good to get her away from them, Ezra. Tucker Crow was a mean dog, and he didn't keep prisoners for long."

He stared straight into the watchful eyes with a desperate need for Chris to know. "I tried to stop them. I did everything I could to stop them. I tried to make them take me instead. I tried everything I could think of, I swear."

No one else might understand what he meant, but he was sure Chris did, though Chris said nothing for a long moment. Chris then bowed his head and spoke in a voice almost too soft to hear, as though he were sharing a secret of his own: "I was afraid you might be dead before I could reach you."

Trust. He felt obscurely ashamed that the only option he'd finally felt he had was to try to hasten his own death rather than striving to hold out for as long as he could in the trust that the others, that Chris, would come for him. He looked helplessly at the tired, worn man across the room. Should he have known Chris would come? Should he know right now what Chris wanted and what Chris expected?

He thought of the last time they'd been in his bed at the saloon. Chris had tried to kiss him, as Chris always tried, but he'd turned his face away as he'd been doing for several weeks. He'd tried to guide Chris's mouth to areas of sexual excitement rather than letting Chris draw him across that emotional threshold. Chris hadn't stopped trying to make that connection between them each time they shared a bed, but up until then he'd let Ezra have his way.

That time, however, Chris had taken his jaw in one hand and turned him to face him and not let him go. He hadn't been able to avoid seeing the complex emotions swirling in Chris's lamp-lit eyes. Chris had lowered his head slowly toward him, and he'd stiffened in panic, his breath becoming shallow: flee, get away, escape.... Chris hadn't touched his lips, though. Chris had pressed a kiss next to his mouth and held it for long moments as he lay trembling at this near-breach of his final defense.

But when Chris had released him, lifting his mouth from his cheek, he'd also left the bed. His lean nude beauty and partial erection had been unselfconsciously displayed as he'd reached for his clothes. Watching Chris dress with his usual lack of fuss, he'd clung in panic to silence, afraid to know why Chris was leaving before they'd done anything or what he expected: of Ezra or himself or the two of them.

If sexual desire wouldn't keep Chris with him any more, then there wasn't anything left for them. Was there?

Within two hours of being left alone in his bed, he'd fled to the Chinaman's shack. It wasn't the first time he'd gone, but it was the first time he'd outright sought an oblivion that would quell all thought and feeling and would last as long as his money did. And when the ready money was gone and the bees were stirring inside his head, then there were the other arrangements, in which sex had a calculable value in and of itself and Ezra Standish could look after himself the way he always had.

"Are you all right?"

He looked up at Chris, who was now looming over him. Fine, he wanted to say, but the word stuck in his throat as he looked into the weary face. He didn't yet know the sources of all the lines graven into that face. He knew the feel of the battle scars on the fine body by touch, but not their tales. He didn't know all the nuances in Chris's soul. He knew the sound of Chris's laughter from too few occasions. If he wanted to learn more, to hear and see and know more of this man, if he wanted to have Chris's trust in all matters intimate and learn to trust in his turn, then he would have to chance the unknown for the first time in his life. He'd have to have faith that Chris wanted him to make that leap, and would be waiting.

"No." He shook uncontrollably. "I'm not."

Chris's hand was instantly on his shoulder, squeezing. Warm and strong and steadying.

:::::::

The shack was Spartan, rough, and unfinished. A carpet wouldn't go amiss on the plank floor, and cushions were an outright necessity for that back-breaking settle that passed for a couch. Rusticity was all well and good in its place, naturally, which is why he made a point of avoiding such places as much as possible. Certainly the bed, with its lumpy ticking-covered mattress, was a poor substitute for the featherbed in his room at the saloon.

The one advantage the domicile did have, however, was its isolation. Built miles from town and any other habitation, Chris's shack provided a sanctuary from watching eyes that compensated for all its other deficiencies together.

Well, excepting the bed. Though Chris was probably right in saying there was no profit in nit-picking, especially as the bed was Chris's and he seemed to find it satisfactory.

A mere three days out of his sickbed, fever-weakened and thinned down to his leanest, he had arrived at the shack feeling the effects of over-exertion. Nathan's doomful warnings had rung in his ears; damn if the man didn't know what he was talking about. He had no intention, however, of ever giving Nathan the satisfaction of learning he'd staggered off his horse and been saved from measuring his length in the dirt only through the intervention of a strong arm around his middle. He could have done without the chuckle in his ear as he'd been helped up the steps to the porch and settled on a bench like an old geezer, but he wouldn't exchange the privacy they had here for any number of creature comforts.

The bed was more than tolerable when Chris stretched his length against him and ran a hand down his arm to link their fingers. Tonight was their second here. He'd made a mistake the night before when Chris gathered him close and first feathered a finger along the faded welt on his chest before flattening his palm and skimming down Ezra's abdomen. He'd caught Chris's hand before it could descend too low and spoken with rueful regret.

"Sorry, but I'm afraid I'm too tired to be capable of anything tonight."

Chris had stiffened. He pulled his hand gently free and moved slightly but definitely away in the bed, leaving him afraid matters would be over between them before they'd fully started. Cursing himself for his own inevitable misjudgment, he made the first nonsexual advance he'd hazarded in all the times they'd shared a bed. Making trust his strength, he moved against Chris and settled himself on his left side with his pillow close to Chris's. He placed his sore but healing right arm over Chris's chest. With the trust he'd been nurturing for days, he closed his eyes, ready to sleep.

Chris again hadn't let him down. He had to wait only moments before Chris sighed and placed a hand over his. The tension left Chris and they settled into sleep together.

He'd woken during the night, confused and with fears of being alone that had never before bothered him. He was accustomed to being alone in a crowd and alone after the lamps were blown out, and always alone in bed except during sex. That familiar solitude had tilted askew when he'd become one of the band of peacekeepers. Once Chris had entered his bed, his old way of living had altered out of all recognizable parameters until now even bed was no longer the defensive bastion he'd made of it years before. So here he found himself, after all these years, beset with night terrors of being abandoned again to his aloneness.

He'd heard snores near his left ear and smiled in the darkness before sinking back into the lumpy haven. Last night was the first time they'd slept together, and tonight would be the second.

Chris was holding his left hand, idly examining the half-healed cuts that criss-crossed it. He watched the thumb rubbing the patches of skin between scabs and felt choked. He'd let down a lot of people in his life, most recently Addie. Although various townsfolk who had seen his attempts to shield Addie in the street had insisted--to him and to her distraught mother before she'd whisked Addie off to Baltimore to visit an aunt and distract the child with adventures in the city--he'd done his best to protect her, he felt he'd let her down. She'd depended on him, but he'd failed her first in the street and again at the camp, just as he'd failed others who had needed or wanted him to be more, or other, than what he was. He'd let down countless people over the years, including, ironically, his mother. She took every opportunity to express her disappointment with what she considered his inexcusable softness and lack of healthy self-interest since he'd settled in Four Corners in this peculiar, not to mention pecuniary, role of lawman. He expected he would let down a great many more people in the future, one way or another.

The one person he never wanted to let down again, however, was this wounded man who had lowered his own barriers to him.

"I was running out on you," he said, because Chris deserved to know everything and make his own decision.

Chris's eyes lifted to his, and he fought the panic in his gut at the somber look he received.

"You'd already run out on me days before all this even though your body was still there."

Chris let go of his hand and touched his face with tender fingertips, skirting around the bruises and scrapes. He didn't know how to match this gentleness; he didn't know how to be whatever it was Chris might want of him, or need. The panicked fear of failure roiled inside him.

In one of those eerie moments in which they seemed to share emotions, Chris dropped his forehead to Ezra's shoulder, and murmured, "Why, of all the people in the world I mighta come to want since losing Sarah, did it have to be you?"

He had to swallow twice before he managed a reply, resurrecting the tried defense against welling pain: "At least the sex is good."

Chris laughed against his shoulder, but the sound was harsh. He hesitantly placed a hand on Chris's head and cradled him with a flare of protectiveness that took him by surprise. He was further surprised when Chris relaxed against him, allowing Ezra the intimacy of stroking him for a long quiet period. Serenity seemed to enclose them in a safe cocoon.

He felt sundered when Chris lifted his head and sat away from him.

"Even you have to know by now it ain't only sex. Don't you, Ezra?"

Once he'd admitted his desire for help in the clinic, Chris had stayed with him as he'd fought free of the opium dependency. Chris had stayed with him and witnessed every weak, revealing moment.

"I might just become dependent on you instead of opium." That bitter fear had accompanied his descent into weakness as he'd turned to outside help instead of fighting the battle alone, as he'd always done before.

"You're free of it." Chris shifted down in the bed and pulled him close. "Again. You've freed yourself of it before, several times over the years, haven't you? How old were you the first time you went through that?"

Appalled at this baring of his deepest shame, he tried to pull away, but Chris had a firm grip on him. When Chris spoke again, his voice was deep and calm.

"The way Nathan tells it, some mothers feed Soothing Syrups to their young 'uns to keep 'em pacified. Occurred to me Maude was the type of mother who might find nothing wrong in feeding her child spoonfuls of patent medicine if it kept him from demanding too much of her attention. Seems like kids can get a need for the opium in the syrup. How old were you the first time you had to do without it?"

He pushed away from Chris and made it to a seat on the edge of the bed, but found himself unable to go any farther because he had nowhere to go. Everything he wanted was behind him on the bed. He wrapped his arms around himself as he shivered with a cold that came entirely from within, and from the knowledge that he was lost because he couldn't bear to return to the aloneness Chris had irrevocably breached.

Arms encircled him and pulled him back against a sturdy, unyielding warmth. Chris's stubbled chin brushed his temple.

"Five," he gasped, committing himself to trust once more. "Or thereabouts. I was five."

"Maude get a conscience all of a sudden?"

"No. She left me with an aunt who didn't believe in giving patent medicine to children."

"And did she help--"

"No, she didn't help me, all right?" He fended Chris away and retreated to sit against the wall at the head of the bed, nursing his aching arm in his other hand and drawing his legs up between himself and Chris. "She locked me in a room until I stopped screaming for both the medicine and my mother."

"And I suppose when Maude took you back, she fed it to you again."

He made a final attempt at shoring up his mauled defenses. "I can't see it's any concern of yours."

"That what you figure?"

Chris was kneeling on the bed facing him. The lamp washed his hair and the planes of his body with the golden sheen of a cougar's pelt. He was a tough man who had defeated every opponent in his gunslinging days, and now killed men in the name of peacekeeping with the skill and coolness that had kept him alive through the worst odds. Yet he'd barely survived losing his wife and son four years before, and he still had black days when anguish and guilt drove him inwards and kept everyone else away.

"We're both fucked up." He held Chris's shadowed eyes with deliberate challenge. "You're as fucked up as I am."

"Yeah, maybe so. And neither of us is likely to change any time soon. I'm too old and you're too damn ornery. You'll go on driving me crazy with that mouth of yours and the things you do, and I'll go on wanting to kill you as often as I want to look out for you. But the next time you need something to lean on, Ezra, you lean on me. Not that crap."

"And will it be me you'll lean on the next time your memories crowd you, or will it be a whiskey bottle--or Mary Travis?"

The silence was long and tense. Their eyes stayed locked, but the tension between them seeped away, transmuting into something gentler they shared, some sweeter quality rooted in their acceptance of each other, warts and flaws and vulnerabilities and all. He slowly relaxed his defensive posture and watched as Chris's shoulders slumped by degrees before they lifted in a sketchy shrug.

"I dunno. I reckon that depends on you."

He couldn't resist the humor that percolated in his gut, and he shook his head, smiling wryly. "You don't play fair, Mr. Larabee."

An answering smile touched Chris's mouth. "Since you hate gambling and leave nothing to chance, it's the only way to play with you, Mr. Standish."

Delight startled him, kindling warmth as he laughed aloud. It was the first time Chris had come close to verbalizing a possible need of his own for him. His spirit lightened precipitously into playfulness.

"I drive you crazy. You point it out with nauseating regularity and, may I add, more than a smidgeon of pomposity."

The smile deepened around Chris's mouth and a light danced in his eyes as he tilted his head. "You keep me on my toes."

"I condemn you--and I paraphrase, but I believe I reflect the gist of your numerous commentaries on the subject--to a teetering existence on a tightrope finely stretched between killing temper and frustrated impatience."

"Life with you ain't boring, I will admit." Chris's eyes were a dark, sultry caress that made his breath quicken and his pulse race.

Boring? The word didn't fit within a league of the man eyeing him with a depth of humor, passion, and emotion no one else in his life had ever cared to show him. And maybe the secret of this odd but undeniable pull between them was as simple as the fact that Chris liked a challenge as much as he did, and each of them found challenge in spades in the other.

Sensing they'd dealt with all the serious issues either of them could stand for one night, if not one lifetime, he sent Chris a smoldering look and eased down in the bed. Drawing up one leg, he displayed himself with a view to more licentious play.

"Will you join me in supporting each other in one particular mutual dependency?"

Chris didn't exactly have a smoldering look; it was more a notching up of his usual brooding intensity. Whatever word might best describe it, the look sent blood rushing to Ezra's penis and sweat to the palms of his hands. He licked his lips as Chris settled on his side and leaned over him. He watched as Chris's narrowed eyes surveyed him with a focused attention that made him feel as though goose bumps were prickling inside his skin as he awaited the feel of Chris's tough hands.

Chris, however, shook his head, looking rueful. "I don't know where to touch you."

He peered down at himself. He'd forgotten about the bruises that mottled most of his torso. They all appeared to have reached the lovely mauve-and-yellow stage of their life cycles. The reddening flush on his engorging cock provided a delicate clash of color in the dominating palette.

"Charming." He sighed, and abandoned his attempt at passive seduction in favor of a more active role.

Chris's skin had the flavor--if not, thankfully, the texture--of salted hardtack. This dreamy thought came to him as he used his tongue and his lips to savor spots here, and more there. He swirled the tip of his tongue around a rucked nipple, enjoying Chris's gasps and small buck as much as the sensation on his tongue. It had come as little surprise to discover, months ago when they had embarked on this venture together, that all that intensity of feeling in Chris translated in sexual matters to a soaring passion that, when he was set alight, could overpower even Ezra's own honed sensuality.

His hands slid down the hard abdomen and found Chris's cock lifting against his thigh. Sliding his fingers around the organ, he eased the foreskin farther back and used a gently circling knuckle to stimulate the damp head. Chris's fingers dug into his shoulders, and he upped the sensory ante by trailing his mouth from one nipple to the other before trekking slowly down the gradations of the ribcage, pausing to graze with relish at any spot that elicited a jerk or gasp from Chris. Shifting onto his knees and straddling Chris's right leg, he wrapped his right hand around the hardening balls as the legs parted and Chris's penis throbbed in his left hand. His own penis demanding attention, he rubbed himself against the hairy, muscular surface of Chris's leg and moaned in his throat at the myriad sensations as he drew Chris's cock fully into his mouth, reveling in the taste and feel and smell of this act. His eyes shut as he slid the tip of his tongue under the retreating edge of the foreskin and heard Chris curse colorfully as he gave a controlled buck. While Chris's other leg and the rest of his body jerked, the leg he was straddling tensed but remained still. He was settling in happily for the duration when Chris pulled him free and urged him up to lie beside him.

"Not this time." Chris rested a cool hand against his flushed face. "Together."

Chris eased them onto their sides facing each other and gathered him close against him with care for his bandaged right arm. Large hands stroked down his back and cupped his buttocks, easing their lower bodies into a matched rhythm of thrust and give that rubbed their slick cocks against each other and the walls of their bellies. He wrapped his left arm around Chris's neck and pulled his head down so Chris's face was cushioned against his throat. Another flood of tender protectiveness confused and yet thrilled him. Chris was nipping and licking him, moving up and down his throat and along his jaw. He ran his hand through Chris's sweaty hair as he listened to the susurration of his own moaned "Chris...Chris...Chris."

Chris climaxed against him, then held him as he thrust in the slickness of Chris's seed to his own little death. When he struggled back from the darkness of the aftermath, it was to find Chris had left the bed and was standing across the room next to the table, wiping himself clean. The air felt chill against his heated skin, and a residual vestige of fear stirred in his heaving belly as he rolled onto his back.

He could trust Chris. He thought he was capable of that faith, now. He thought Chris might even be able to trust him, to a point. He knew he was bound to let people down in the future, one way or another. He'd cheat his way to his goals, and he'd lie and he'd finagle, and he'd con whoever presented a mark. He expected he would likely let Chris down in all sorts of small ways, too, but not in the big ways. Not if he could help himself.

"Is it," he couldn't stop himself from asking, "really more than sex?"

Chris sat beside him, making the lumpy ticking dip and the bed creak. Chris washed him, then turned and tossed the rag into the bowl on the table. He threw a rough cloth over the dampness on the mattress and stretched his body full-length against him once more. He watched the handsome, impassive face all the while Chris settled them together, with care for his arm and that the blankets covered them both evenly, until Chris was finally done and their eyes met.

"Of all the people in the world I mighta come to want, it appears, for my sins, to be you."

He took Chris's face in his left hand and saw the wariness still lurking. He leaned down and lingeringly kissed each eye closed. He kissed Chris's stubbled left cheek, kissed the right. He looked at Chris's fine-cut mouth that seemed defenseless beneath the closed eyes. Chris's lips were slightly parted, and he could feel the coiled tension as Chris waited with his own brand of trust. Chris was offering him the chance to make something strong and true together. Just a possibility, just a chance, and it was up to him either to accept the gamble or not--he who rigged the hands he dealt to avoid the possibility of losing. He'd never thought a time would come when simply being in the game was more important than winning.

He fit his lips to Chris's and slipped his tongue into a welcome more ardent and joyful than he'd dared hope.


End file.
